All Your Dreams Are Still As New
by Velkyn Karma
Summary: In which Dean makes a different choice, or perhaps has no choice at all. An alternative continuation to 2.20, "What Is And What Should Never Be." Gen, no shipping.
1. Ten of Cups

**All Your Dreams Are Still As New**

A fanfiction by Velkyn Karma

**Summary:** In which Dean makes a different choice, or perhaps has no choice at all. An alternative continuation to 2.20, "What Is And What Should Never Be." Gen, no shipping.

**Note:** I was pretty sure I was never going to write anything for this fandom. Then I asked myself 'what if that went differently?' and the next thing I know thirty thousand words just sort of spewed out of my brain. Ew. Oops.

**Note the Second: **I had only seen the end of S2 when this fic was completed, so if it inadvertently contradicts, duplicates, or references something later, it's entirely coincidental and accidental! I haven't seen much farther than that, so please don't spoil me either!

**Warnings**: Swearing, some blood, "character death" (sort of), suicidal thoughts/actions (in the same vein as the original episode)

**Disclaimer:** I do not own, or pretend to own,_ Supernatural_ or any of its subsequent characters, plots or other ideas. That right belongs to Warner Brothers and associated parties.

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><p>"Hush—I think he's coming around."<p>

Dean feels a shiver of recognition run up his spine at the voice. It's the first thing he feels at all as he checks back into the real world again, but other sensations catch up pretty fast. He's laying down, on a bed he thinks, it smells like sanitizer and antiseptic, and he can hear the faint murmur of activity far away underneath the voices. Hospital, probably. He's woken up in enough of them to recognize the signs.

"Thank God—I was really starting to worry, no matter what the doctors said..."

But not with _those _voices. He struggles to wake faster and is rewarded when his eyes blink open and his vision blurs. The faces surrounding him are difficult to make out at first, but slowly they swim into focus. Mom right at his side, and Jess and Carmen at the foot of the hospital bed, and—

"Finally," comes another voice, directly to his left, and that one he _is _all too familiar with. "Took you long enough. I'd guess you were catching up on your beauty sleep, but seeing as it didn't do you much good..."

Dean blinks again. Sam's trying to sound calm, but Dean knows him perfectly, enough to recognize the otherwise indistinguishable tremor in his voice, or see the concern behind the tired smile. He'd been worried.

Dean has to know why.

"Wh'happened?" he slurs, immediately trying to sit up. His mother immediately puts a hand on his shoulder to keep him still, and he obeys the unspoken request instantly, settling even if he really doesn't want to. Everyone that matters is here, but if something bad's happened—

"You really don't remember anything?" Sam asks, looking concerned. Dean shakes his head, and the four of them exchange glances. Dean feels left out of the loop, especially because he knows those glances are about _him. _

But they seem to recognize that he's not enjoying being excluded, because a second later Carmen speaks up. "You left the house," she explains. "In a total rush—you told me you had something to take care of, and you just left."

"You came to my house," his mother adds. "I was asleep, but you woke Sam up when you let yourself in..."

Dean turns his gaze to his brother expectantly, and Sam shrugs a little uncomfortably. "I don't...really know what happened, Dean. One minute you kept insisting you had something to take care of, and the next you were just...muttering nonsense, getting really agitated...it was like you wanted to punch something. And when I tried to get you to calm down and take it easy you all of a sudden just passed out." He looked more than a little worried at recalling the memory, wearing that kicked-puppy Dean-please-don't-overdo-it expression Dean's all too familiar with on the Sam he knows better, and adds, "You really scared me man. You were burning up and ranting and...I've never seen you like that before."

"We ended up driving you to the hospital," Jess adds, even as she slides over to Sam to offer a little support. "You've been here for over a day."

"The doctors think it might be stress," his mother adds. "And you were running a pretty high fever at the time, so combining the two..." She looks concerned as she runs a hand gently through his hair. Dean's an adult and _so _past needing any kind of coddling, but he enjoys it anyway, closing his eyes for a moment. It's mom, being motherly, and he's not pushing that away for anything in the world.

"Why didn't you tell us you weren't feeling good?" she asks after a moment, now pressing the back of her hand gently to his forehead, like she's checking his temperature even though there's a computer screen with all his stats less than a foot away from where she's standing.

Dean shrugs and opens his eyes slowly. "Sorry. Came on kinda fast. Felt fine this morning." And then, after a moment, "What about the warehouse?" Because he's got this weird impression that he'd been in one recently, stalking through the dark after..._something..._and voices pleading with him to _listen. _But they're the barest little flickers of memory, and he can't hold onto them as they flit away into the back of his head.

He glances at Sam—he's _sure _Sam was there—but his brother is giving him an odd look, with even more of that pansy are-you-absolutely-sure-you-are-okay-because-I'm-expecting-you-to-fall-over-any-second expression than before, and then he says slowly, "There wasn't any warehouse, Dean. You came to mom's house and passed out there. Me and Jess took you straight to the hospital from there." The worried look intensifies, and he glances at Jess and Carmen, as if he's afraid to say something that'll set Dean off or prove he's even more crazy.

Carmen coughs, and then says with the clinical precision of a trained nurse, "Well, he was running a pretty high fever. It's not uncommon for hallucinations to set in past a certain temperature, and patients can sometimes get confused about where they are or what's going on. It's probably just a dream."

The explanation seems to satisfy the rest of his family, especially Sam, who looks slightly less worried that his older brother is cracking up. _If only you knew the extent of it, Sammy, _Dean thinks to himself idly. If they're all in a panic over him getting a little sick and delusional, he can only imagine how they'd react if he told them he'd spent his life hunting shit that goes bump in the night. They'd lock him in the psych ward for sure.

And Dean's definitely not interested in a rubber room, not when his brain's finally getting back into gear. _The wish, _he reminds himself. Things are perfect now, more or less. Could be better—he wishes dad was here, getting a chance to play baseball and be with mom and congratulate Sammy on his engagement. But he's got mom, and Sam's happy and safe, and he's even got a girlfriend of his own that's the girl of his dreams (literally even), and he'll take it.

So he doesn't fight the 'hallucination' explanation, even though it doesn't feel _quite _right. Something deep in his gut tells him there's something else at stake here and that warehouse was _real _and Sam was there with him. It doesn't matter. Instead he says, "Yeah, that's probably it...sorry, guys. Didn't mean to scare you any. It's been crazy at the garage, lots of stuff going on, y'know how it is...guess it went to my head."

They all nod and smile and agree. Carmen makes a couple sassy remarks, and Sam makes a few attempts at banter that are kind of pathetic compared to the Sam he's familiar with's clever repartee but, considering their relationship now (or lack of one) are still more than he could have hoped for. Jess smiles and laughs at their antics and is so very _alive. _And an hour later his mother finally shoos everybody out, insisting that Dean needs his rest and that they can come back bright and early tomorrow morning to help him home when the doctors release him.

No checking himself out early in order to get out of dodge before his fake medical insurance catches up with him. No hoping nobody ID's him and waiting for the feds to come around the corner to arrest him. No crappy motel to look forward to, and no exhausting ten hour cross country drives cradling a broken limb or trying to get comfortable while sore all over. He's got family waiting to pick him up and take him _home. _

It's like a little slice of heaven. He's never liked hospitals before, especially with the number of times he's almost died in one, but now he settles back on the bed comfortably and drifts off to sleep, looking forward to seeing everyone again tomorrow.

The warehouse vanishes completely from his mind, and doesn't come back.

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><p>Life returns to normal. And the crazy thing is, it really is <em>normal. <em>One hundred percent, civilian-living-a-totally-repetitive-everyday-life normal, when he stays in the same town for more than a week, reads the newspaper only to learn about current events around Lawrence, and doesn't have to worry about getting ganked from behind by some ghost or creature just by virtue of walking down the street.

It's great.

He swears off hunting completely. He's done with it. All of it. He remembers what he's been forced to pay, even if that life is gone like he hasn't otherwise lived it—all the blood, sweat and tears, all the sacrifices he's made, the life he had to give up, the people he's watched die. Or, maybe worse, he remembers the people that didn't die, and just kept suffering because of what the job did to them. He's so tired of that life, and this wish...it's like a second chance. A way to start over. _You paid your dues, Dean, you did what you had to, you can stop pretending to be a hero now. _

And he's going to. His life is better than he'd ever imagined it could be now. He's got his family together again, alive and safe and happy. He's not going back, not going to let hunting ruin him—_them—_a second time. He doesn't owe the world anything, especially not in a job as thankless as hunting gets, when half the time you save somebody's ass and they don't even believe it, or can't understand just how close they came to real peril. It's so much risk, so much danger, so much trouble, and now he's got too much to lose to ever want to go back to that.

So he doesn't.

And, thankfully, the life doesn't seem to come back for him, either. Nothing weird seems to happen in Lawrence, Kansas—it's a nice, quiet, perfectly normal suburban town. There's the odd mugging or robbery, a couple articles on drug busts, the occasional blurb about drunk driving car crashes—but no articles about mysterious suicides or strange animal attacks that typically mark an old job. Dean hasn't seen a damn thing out of place since he came back from the hospital after his fever incident, and he's never been so glad for it.

In fact, the only unusual thing happens when he's seeing Sam and Jess off, a week after they bring him back from the hospital. They'd stayed an extra week after Dean had gotten sick, just to help out and make sure he was okay. Sam never straight-up admitted to it, but it was clear Dean's passing out had unsettled him, enough for them to stick around a little longer. But they really need to get back to the college, Sam insists, and once they're reassured the family is back on track and Dean's back on his feet they arrange for a flight back, so they can get back to their classes.

Dean's not thrilled about Sam going back off to college. He wants to repair that relationship more than anything, and Sam's distance from him—literal and otherwise—is the only thing that really feels _off _about this wish. But the best way to fix things is to start small and help him out, so he offers to drive them to the airport. They accept, and while Dean's helping Sam carry all their bags out to the Impala he _swears _for a moment he's seeing double. Because that's Sam, in his neatly pressed preppy college clothes with a duffle slung over one shoulder, but he's pretty sure _that's _also Sam, in a beat up jacket with an startled, worried look on his pale face, and he jerks back in reactionary surprise.

"Dean?" Sam asks, and when Dean shakes his head once and blinks he's only seeing one brother again, giving him a wary, concerned look. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Dean says immediately, the lie rolling off his tongue easily from years of practice hiding ailments from his little brother. "Stood up too fast. Dizzy, y'know."

"Don't go passing out on me again," Sam grouses, half joking, half serious. He's still giving Dean that look, like he's not sure if things are okay. "You good to drive? We can still catch a cab..."

"Hell no," Dean vetoes immediately. "If you gotta go back, you're going back in style. Some people take limos, but my baby's way classier."

"If you say so," Sam says, but he's smiling a little hesitantly now, like he's not quite sure how to keep up the conversation and it's a little awkward, but not quite hating it, either. Dean grins despite the weirdness of the situation. Progress already.

He decides, in the end, that he'd probably just caught a flash of Sam's reflection in the hallway mirror when he'd stood up too fast, out of the corner of his eye. It's a shoddy explanation at best, but it's not like it's a haunting or anything. Hell, Sam's alive. There's nothing weird going on, and it doesn't happen again. No problems.

Weeks pass as he settles further into his new life, and decides he really enjoys being, well, _domestic_. He jumps at the chance to do simple household chores like taking out the trash and doing the dishes. He has a field day every time he does yard work, mowing the lawn and trimming the hedges and digging up dirt for entirely legal and legitimate reasons like setting up flower beds for Carmen. Once after a thunderstorm part of the ceiling starts leaking, and Dean is so enthusiastic about getting a chance to patch it up instead of tearing the house apart that Carmen actually asks him if he's feeling okay. He loves going to the garage for his day job, having the chance to earn some stable money without conning people out of it, and being able to fix things with his hands instead of kill with them. He likes having the chance to cook _real _meals instead of heating up crappy dollar dinners at a mini mart or living out of a can, and discovers he's got a surprising skill for grilling.

His family is a little bewildered at his exuberance in life, and treats it with a mix of being amused and mildly concerned. He doesn't really mind so much, because it's nice to have a family that worries, and it's not like they've got much to worry over anyway. He's not out beating up vampires and exorcizing demons, and really, doesn't every woman want a guy that's _willing _to take out the trash?

There are other things to adjust to, of course. For starters, it's weird having a girlfriend who's around for more than a day or two. Dean's so used to one night stands and ditching town without ever getting close to a woman, that it's weird adjusting to being in a committed relationship that's apparently being going on for a while, near as he can figure. But Carmen's great (and smoking hot), so he doesn't really feel the need to get away or move on.

And there's the hurdle of figuring out exactly who he was before the wish really took effect, because he often feels like he was dropped into somebody else's life halfway through. It's a hell of a lot more difficult than he'd expected when he can't exactly ask _hey, can you explain this one thing about myself I should know but don't _without his family giving him that concerned are-you-getting-sick-again look. Of course, the are-you-drunk look is even worse, when he does something completely natural for him that is apparently out of character for wish-him—like showing no interest in the blockbuster horror movie that comes out two weeks after his hospital stay, after supposedly rambling about it for weeks. Wish-him was apparently a diehard horror movie buff, go figure. If only he'd known what was _really _out there—but Dean does, and just can't be bothered with that crap anymore.

The most important by far is making sure his second chance goes to good use, by shoring up the few holes and imperfections that _are _in his current life. He spends a lot of time with his mother, visiting constantly in a way he's pretty sure wish-him never quite did, helping out around the house when she needs it, or just stopping by to chat and see how she's doing. He enjoys every minute that he sees her alive, and even ventures into the sappier side of things—usually Sam's territory—to make sure she _knows _just how much he appreciates her. Even weeks later she's still mildly bewildered by his apparent change of heart and all this extra attention, but Dean can tell she's happy too, and that's all that matters. He's got years and years of things he's wanted to say to her while hunting every nightmare that's out there and he's not going to give up the chance to do it now.

Sam is his other priority, and he tries even harder with that one. Sam's a lot less accessible than his mother is, half a country away in California studying law, but Dean does his damnedest to connect with the kid, to fix things. He's got to make it up to Sam, find a way to reconnect after all those years of never being close, find something in common that they can share. To find a way to be his big brother again, in _every _sense of the word. Not just the guy who picks on his little brother for the hilarity of it or bickers with him or relentlessly teases him about his dates, but the guy that looks out for him, too, protects him and offers advice and never, ever lets him down when he needs help. It sounds like Sam's only familiar with the first half in this new life, and not the second, and Dean's got to show him that it's _there, _no matter what it takes.

He does his best. He calls constantly, at least once a week, sometimes more, leaves voicemails when Sam doesn't pick up because he's studying or in class and tries to find something to talk about when he does. He emails back and forth too, or texts; sometimes Sam responds better to written word than spoken ones, when he's got time to think about an answer and isn't plagued with awkward silences as he tries to figure out what to say. Once Dean offers to come out and visit, which seems to throw Sam completely.

"You hate flying, Dean, and that's an awful long drive," he says, sounding a little exasperated, when Dean brings it up.

It's not, really, not for Dean, who's so used to roaming the country at breakneck speeds trying to get to the next job before another person dies that a casual road trip from Kansas to California is a breeze. But he can't exactly mention his non-existent country-wandering experiences, so he just says, "It'll be fun. Road tripping. Whadya say?"

Sam sighs. "Dean, look, I realize your warm, fuzzy ecstasy trip thing is more or less here to stay, and it's great that you're being a little less, well..."

"—of a dick," Dean supplies frankly, because, well, he calls'em like he sees'em, and if wish-him let his relationship with his brother go that badly, that's what he sees.

"—sure," Sam acknowledges dryly, "but I really gotta study, man, I don't have time for road trips or visits."

"Oh," Dean says, and wishes it didn't feel quite so much like a stab to the heart.

"Look," Sam says a moment later, sounding partly frustrated and maybe slightly guilty, "I don't mean it like that, it's just—"

"You're busy studying, I get it," Dean says. "It's fine." Thank God he's so good at lying to his brother—and that's the version that knows him pretty well. This one's easy by comparison.

"The holidays are coming up soon. Thanksgiving? Christmas? We'll get a break then and come down to visit like we always do. It's just a couple months, it'll be fine."

"Sure." A whole couple of months of not seeing Sammy. It unsettles Dean, who's not used to letting his eye off his brother for that long after all the recent stuff that happened in his hunter-life, but this wish-world is different. Nothing's hunting Sam. He's just at school like thousands of other kids. He'll be fine.

"Okay. Look, Dean, I gotta go, I've got a huge test tomorrow—"

"Yeah. Okay, Sammy, I'll let you go then. And good luck on your test, okay? Knock'em dead."

He can practically _hear _the confused expression that is no doubt on Sam's face at the nickname, but then the kid sighs and says, "Yeah, I will. Thanks, Dean. G'night."

It happens like that a lot, really. Dean tries, and he can tell Sam is surprised by it and maybe even a little happy, but he's always busy. It's not like Sam's trying to brush off Dean, or at least Dean doesn't get that impression. But the kid just doesn't know how to deal with his brother trying to get into his life again on top of all the other stuff he's dealing with at school, and things get awkward. It's frustrating to Dean, and he hates that he has to work his way back into his brother's life so slowly when they used to be so close, understanding each other on an instinctive level. But if it means getting back into Sam's life he'll take it as slow as he has to, work his way back in one conversation at a time, and finally make a difference and patch things up.

Things are almost perfect. And once he fills that final hole, things will _be _perfect. Dean's never been happier in his life, and he never wants this second chance to end.


	2. Seven of Swords

**All Your Dreams Are Still As New**

Part two of a fanfiction by Velkyn Karma

**Disclaimer:** I do not own, or pretend to own,_ Supernatural_ or any of its subsequent characters, plots or other ideas. That right belongs to Warner Brothers and associated parties.

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><p>It starts when Dean wakes up one morning feeling like absolute shit.<p>

He's no stranger to that particular wake up call in his old life, of course. Dean's lost track of the number of times he's woken up sore, bruised and broken, or with any number of illness symptoms after a long night out in the cold and wet hunting some monster or another. It's par for the course in hunting, but definitely a lot more out of place in his new life, when the worst injury he's got to worry about is hitting his head on somebody's hood when he's fixing an engine or burning himself while he's grilling burgers.

Weirder still is how strong it comes on. He hasn't really exerted himself or been around anybody contagious recently—this illness has literally come out of nowhere. He's too hot, kicking off the blankets and feeling like he's burning alive, his body aches _everywhere, _his head in particular is pounding like a drum set right behind his eyes, and even though he's been sleeping all night he's exhausted. Worst of all is his chest; it feels like he can't quite get enough air, no matter how hard he tries, like there's a vice clamped around his lungs. _Weirdest _of all is the tingle of anxiety in the back of his head. He feels unsettled, stressed, like something bad's going to happen, even if he can't quite explain why.

Carmen, trained nurse that she is, catches on pretty fast that he's not feeling so hot (or too hot). She diagnoses him with the flu after prodding him into revealing a few of his symptoms, although he manages to downplay it enough that she doesn't insist on dragging him to the hospital. She asks if he wants her to stay home with him, but he really doesn't feel like being coddled when he feels like shit—he never has, he's always hated when people see him like this, even Sam. Carmen shakes her head in exasperation, but is apparently used to this from wish-him. She helpfully calls him in sick from the garage, sets some medication, a bottle of water, the TV remote, and a list of care instructions on his nightstand and a trash can next to his bed, and turns off his cell phone so he won't be disturbed.

"Sleep," she insists, planting a brief kiss on his head (Dean pouts, but then again, he wouldn't want to kiss sick-mouth either). "Really, Dean. It's important for you to rest. I'll be back to check on you later, okay? And I set out some soup in case you feel like trying to eat something later."

"Mmm," he replies, but she seems to get it, and laughs softly before heading out the door. God, he doesn't even deserve this woman and he still can't figure out how he managed to get her in the first place. Go wish-him.

He tosses and turns for a while, and the first couple of hours are the worst. His symptoms get stronger, and the breathing difficulties turn into chest pains—it feels like somebody's stabbing him with knives made of fire on either side of his heart for a while. The weird stress feeling grows wildly stronger and he feels anxious, worried. Not afraid, not exactly, but feelings of dread slither through his mind, just barely out of reach, whispering of something foreboding, something bad. _You're hallucinating again, _he tells himself distantly, recognizing that he does have a fever after all, _this is all in your head, now knock it off. _He curls up on his side, wincing through the chest pains and the pounding in his head matching his rapid heartbeats perfectly, and wonders if this is the kind of shit Sammy put up with every time he had one of his visions, because if that's the case they suck even more than he'd first thought.

After a while the pain and the anxiety start to recede, and Dean dozes fitfully, slipping hazily between crappy reality and strange dreams and having a hell of a time trying to tell the difference between the two. His brain _flick-flick-flicks _through old hunting memories like a broken slideshow, jumping from poltergeists to vampires to dead rotting bones in their coffins with no fluidity. At one point he thinks he sees Sam, leaning through a doorway with an anguished expression on his face, and hears him yelling something like _no, please, not again, _although it sounds like it's coming through a crappy stereo, all fuzz and underwater noise. Then it flashes to his father on the pyre, burning away after the deal he made, and Dean can _feel _the heat of it even through the dream.

After that the strange dreams stop, and Dean figures he must have dozed off for a while into real, actual sleep, because the next thing he's aware of is the sound of footsteps just outside the door. He jolts awake and blearily looks over from where he's sprawled on his stomach to see Carmen in the doorway, cell phone in hand and still in her nurse's uniform.

He smiles at her weakly. "Come back t'nurse me, huh?" he asks. "That's nice, but you didn't have to waste your lunch break, I'm feeling a lot better." Which he is, actually—that's not even a lie. The sleep had done him wonders, because he feels shaky and a bit sore and maybe still a little warm, but the headaches and chest pains and breathing issues are gone.

Then his sleep-blurred eyes catch sight of Carmen's face, and the dread that had slithered through his head in the depths of his strange sickness-induced dreams starts crawling its way back into his thoughts. With it comes an inexplicably icy feeling in his gut, like a ghost had just appeared inside of him, like _something's _dying inside him. Because her expression is shocked, pitying, and just a tad horrified, and when her eyes meet his the pity increases, and he knows without a shred of hesitation that something's wrong.

"What's happened?" he asks, tone serious, urgent.

"Your—your mother just called me," Carmen says, slowly, like she's trying to choose her words carefully—or like she doesn't believe what she's saying. "She tried to call you, but I turned off your phone so you could rest, and—" She swallows. "It's...it's Sam and Jess, Dean. They...they're dead. Earlier today."

"_What?_" Dean shoots upright, sitting straight up, ignoring Carmen's squawk of protest for him to _take it easy, he's still recovering. _"No. No no no. I talked to Sammy just last night. He was fine. He was _alive. _It's not like he does anything dangerous out there. He can't be dead. _He can't be._"

"I'm sorry, honey," Carmen says helplessly. "I don't...I don't know the details. Your mother doesn't know them either. She was contacted by Palo Alto police with the news, and they want her to head there as soon as she can so they can talk to her directly about what happened, but..." She shakes her head. "I just...I don't know any more than that. I'm so sorry..."

"No," Dean insists, "It's gotta be a mistake." In a daze he snatches the first pair of pants and shirt he can find and drags them on, wobbling slightly because he's still a little sore and dizzy but fighting through it anyway. "The police just screwed up. There's no way. There's no _way._"

"Honey," Carmen says helplessly, reaching out to try and steady him when he walks shakily for the door, "I know this is sudden, but we can't control things like this when they happen—"

But he can. He _should _be able to. This is _his wish, _he's got his family all around him and things are perfect and they can't be _undone _this way. It's not fair—it's not the way this is supposed to work. It has to be a mistake, and he has to get to the bottom of it. So he ignores Carmen's concerned protests that he needs to stay in bed, he's still not well, and he ignores his own body's protests at being forced to act so quickly while still recovering from such a nasty flu bug. He's killed nastier things and done harder jobs while feeling way worse—this is nothing. _Sam _is important right now. Sam is everything.

He heads straight for his mother's house, hands oddly steady on the Impala's wheel despite the lingering edge of panic and dread at the back of his head, insisting _what if it is real? _Because he can't think like that, he can't. Not when it's Sam. _Never. _

But the moment he walks through the door, and sees his mother's tear-stained face, he knows it's real. It's not a mistake. It's not a terrible joke or a cruel hoax. And it's not _fair, _not like the wish is supposed to be. But it's true—Sam's gone, miles and miles away and just _gone, _and he still doesn't even know why or now.

It's a cruel blow to him, and he can tell it's the same for his mother. Her face is wet with fresh tears as she comes over to him, and he wraps her up in a hug automatically, curling around her as much as he can, like he can shield her from anything. He has to protect her. She's the only one left—

That thought _hurts_. It hurts so bad, and even as mom rests her head on his shoulder and sobs, and he feels her shaking in his arms, he feels himself breaking down too. He tries to fight it off—he has to protect her, be strong for her, especially since dad can't anymore—but it's _Sammy _and it hurts so _bad, _and he ends up burying his face in her hair as he starts crying, clinging tightly to the only family member he's got left.

It's not _fair, _Dean thinks furiously, as he squeezes his eyes shut. It's not _fair. _He made his wish accidentally, but the point of it was he wanted his family alive and surrounding him. Somehow he's been reduced down to just one again; it's like it's playing with him, like it's gone _wrong, _and he doesn't know why.

All he knows is that his perfect wish is rapidly heading the way of a nightmare.

It's Winchester luck at it's worst.

* * *

><p>He stays with his mother for the rest of the day and overnight—there's no way he's leaving her alone now, not to deal with this. And in the morning, he goes with her when she heads to Palo Alto to arrange things for Sam. Mom's been asked to identify the body, and then there's transport and a funeral to arrange, and God only knows what else. Dean's never had to deal with this before as a civilian, but he's sure as hell not letting mom deal with it solo.<p>

Carmen is a Godsend. She understands his need to be with his family and support his mother, and organizes things for them while they're still dealing with the shock of the news: arranges plane tickets and hotel accommodations, works with the Palo Alto police to set appointments and get advice, helps them pack and drives them to the airport.

It's a testament to how badly this hits him and how much it hurts that Dean even gets on the goddamn plane. He still hates them and he hates flying, but he needs to see Sam _now, _and a four hour flight is preferable to a nearly thirty hour drive. He's desperate to know what happened; the police are insistent upon discussing it in person rather than over a phone and won't release details, and he has to know as soon as he can. He'll risk the plane, and if a demon decides to interfere he'll send the fucker back to hell before it gets a chance to interfere with him and Sammy.

There's no demon, of course. It's smooth flying and they get checked in at the hotel quick and easy before meeting with the police. Dean stands supportively at his mother's side, attentive and protective, as the officers patiently and regretfully inform them the circumstances of Sam's and Jess' deaths. Dean reads between the lines of the professional, polite tones to the heart of the matter. Freak accident—there was a new, recently remodeled apartment building on the nice side of town just starting to lease out rooms. They'd been in the building at the time, being shown around by a realtor, when one of the walls had apparently just collapsed and brought down half the ceiling with it. The realtor had bought it as well, as had a tenant already living in the building, and the realtor's assistant had barely escaped with a broken leg.

Real tragedy, the cops insisted. Shoddy workmanship on that remodel. They have every right to pursue the issue legally, if they want.

As if money and lawsuits matter. Sam is _dead. _Dean glares viciously at the cops, daring them to keep going, and they hastily slip away from that topic, apparently uninterested in starting a fight with him.

He wishes they would. Cops or no, he'd feel a lot better if he could punch something. Because that explanation—a freak accident, building spontaneously falling apart—it's got his old gig written all over it. He can feel it in his gut, in the ice water spreading through his veins that's got nothing to do with ghosts but everything to do with the hunt. Something isn't right about this, and if he's right, and Sam was—

_You don't know that yet, _he tells himself furiously. _You don't have all the information yet. You don't know, so shut the hell up and knock it the hell off. _

The police escort them to the morgue next for the actual body identification, and Dean can feel his mother shaking the entire way there. Just outside the door she freezes, and shakes her head suddenly, covering her face in her hands. "I can't," she says helplessly. "I can't do it, I can't, not Sam—"

"I'll do it," Dean says quietly. He really doesn't want to go in there either, and it's different when it's _Sam, _but even so he's no stranger to corpses. His mother doesn't need the additional stress. "Stay here with her," he orders one of the cops, and the man nods immediately, like he's always been taking orders from Dean. The other one gives Dean a look, as if to ask if he's ready, and after Dean takes one last deep breath he nods and follows the man in.

He's nearly sick when he actually sees Sam. The medical examiner assures him it's a perfectly natural reaction; most people aren't used to encountering dead bodies, and it can be unsettling at first. To Dean it's not the corpse that matters—it's the fact that it's _Sam. _The dead don't scare him, but his brother joining their ranks _terrifies _him.

Sam looks so pale and freakishly still and unresponsive. He should be self-conscious, with a couple of strangers surrounding him while he's flopped on a freezing cold examination table covered in nothing but a sheet. He should be insisting that they need to let him up, that he's fine, that they really don't need to worry. He should be giving Dean a scowl and telling him off for the latest ridiculous prank. He should be breathing. His heart should be beating. There's so many things he _should _be doing, but he doesn't do any of them, just lies there still and cold like an object and lets them poke and prod and dig around inside to find out what killed him, and it's so unnatural and _wrong. _

But the identification goes off without a hitch. Pale and unnaturally still as he is, there's no doubting it's Sam, and Dean's heart cracks a little further as the last vestiges of hope that it might have been a mistake leave him. He asks the medical examiner further about the cause of death, and the man more or less repeats the police's story, although he adds that Sam had specifically died from _impalement _by several pieces of rebar when the wall collapsed_, _a detail the officers hadn't bothered to share. Dean had assumed he'd been crushed like the others.

He waits until the medical examiner is distracted for a moment, his back turned as he asks the police officer a question, and quietly twitches the sheet covering everything but Sam's head aside, enough to see his torso. Even neatly stitched up it's gruesome, and Dean feels vaguely ill at the thought of this happening to his brother. Then he notices the pattern—the impalement wounds are far too precise, too evenly distributed, to be accounted to pure chance. If Dean didn't know any better he'd have said his brother had been deliberately stabbed by something targeting vital internal organs, not killed in an accidental building collapse.

He swallows hard and twitches the sheet back into place. This time he only barely manages to keep his bile down, and that through sheer force of will and years of practice fighting horrible things every day. The medical examiner and the officer notice his choked noise, and—assuming, not entirely incorrectly, that he's been overcome with emotion—gently escort him out of the room. Dean lets himself be guided away and back to his mother, head spinning and mind screaming furiously at the discovery he'd made. He feels vaguely numb inside, sick with horror. That ice water feeling in his veins is spreading again, and this time he can't beat it back, or the sense of dread that comes with it.

Because Sam had died of something supernatural. He hadn't known how to protect himself. And Dean, the only one who could, had been nearly two thousand miles away, failing to keep his little brother safe.

* * *

><p>The wake is a nightmare. It happens half a week later back in Lawrence, once they've gotten Sam back home, and Dean spends most of it staring numbly at his little brother in the open casket, too sick with the loss to do anything different.<p>

It feels weird, to see Sam in a coffin. The way Dean's life has been, cremation has always been the unspoken agreement between the three of them—Dad, Sam and himself. After seeing all the things the dead can get up to, none of them really want to be a part of that. Dean had suggested cremation himself, when helping his mother arrange things as best as he could, but she'd wanted a proper burial for her son. Dean didn't have the heart to argue with her on that, not after she's already being forced to bury a child, no matter how much it makes him worry.

And so here they are.

Most people use it as a chance to really say their goodbyes, find some closure before the funeral itself. Dean uses the time to beat himself up over just how badly he fucked up, how massively he failed his little brother.

Because he should have been there. Done _something. _Warned Sammy somehow. Tried to teach him something, no matter how crazy Sam would have thought him. He should never have let Sam leave his sight and go back to Stanford, not knowing what was out there, not knowing how badly prepared for it Sam was this time. At least _his _Sammy, the one he's familiar with, knew how to hunt and protect himself when he'd gone off to college; _this _one, in his new life, was—had been—completely defenseless. He'd _known _that, and he'd let him go anyway. Stupid. Idiotic. Careless. He'd dropped the ball, and it had cost Sam his life, and Jess' too.

At the very least he could have tried harder to bond with Sam before he'd been killed. He'd _been _trying, but it had been too little, too late, and it kills him inside to know Sam didn't even think much of him before he'd died. Had he even known Dean would have done anything to protect him, to save him, if he'd known what was going to happen? If he'd been there? Because he would have—he wouldn't have stopped fighting until whatever attacked him was in the ground, or he was, if it was to protect Sam—but he's positive Sam had never known the extents to which he'd go for his little brother. To this Sam, Dean was just that obnoxious brother that snaked his ATM card and stole his prom date, and recently started annoying him with too many phone calls during test times.

It hurts, so bad, to think Sam went to his grave not knowing how much his brother cared.

A few times, Carmen—hovering constantly at his side—nudges him into talking, asking how he's doing, what he's thinking. He doesn't tell her the really crazy stuff, but he does whisper, "He was my little brother, Carmen. I'm supposed to protect him. And I didn't. I failed, and he's..."

"There's nothing you could have done," she insists, squeezing his arm. "Honey, don't beat yourself up over this. Please. I'm sure if you could have done something you would have, but Sam was in California, and it was an accident. There's no way you could have known."

They all tell him that. Carmen, his mom, Jess' parents (visiting to pay their respects despite their own loss), various family friends. _There's nothing you could do. He was hundreds of miles away and what could you have done—protected him from a falling apartment? You would have died too if you were there. _He knows they mean well. He remembers telling his Sam similar things when they'd tried their hardest to save an impending victim and failed anyway. It made sense then, but it's different when it's his brother that's the victim.

And the one he hates the _most, _when people try to reassure him, is the insistence that it's _not _his job to look out for Sam. He was a perfectly capable adult, they insist; he didn't need his brother's coddling and protection. The underlying _and you never really spent much time together anyway, so where is this protection thing even coming from _is heavily implied and like a punch to the face, because it just rubs it in even further that he'd failed so badly looking out for Sammy that nobody even expected him to care as much as he did.

But as much as their well-intentioned words sting, it ultimately doesn't matter what any of them say. It doesn't matter how impossible it might have been for him to even know what was going on, much less to make the nearly two-thousand mile journey in time to save his brother. It doesn't matter that Sam never expected his big brother to come to his rescue, or that nobody expected that Sam would be looked out for by his older sibling. Dean's still furious with himself for ever letting this happen, because it doesn't matter if this wish-version of the world is different and he never really got along with Sam. He's still the older brother, and no matter what it's his _job, _the very core of his being,to look out for his sibling. No matter how much they might bicker, fight, or just not talk. No matter how ludicrous anybody else might find the idea. And _especially _because Dean knows what's out there, and he of all people should have known better.

He turned his back on hunting, on the supernatural, on all of it, and it got his brother killed. He's the only one that could have protected Sam, no matter what anyone says, and he'd _failed _to do so. They don't understand and they insist otherwise, but at the end of the day, his little brother is dead and the fault lies at his feet.

He hates himself for it. And for a brief moment, he wonders if his wish really came true, or if this is some form of torture. His family is supposed to be together and safe and happy, and he's the one destroying it.

His self-hate persists once the wake is over, and he heads back home with Carmen for the night; mom has Jess' parents staying at the house, and he figures they'll want time to themselves to discuss things. Carmen tries to draw him into talking, but he really just wants to be alone, and because she's so perfect she eventually leaves him be with a warning to come to bed soon, to not stay up too late beating himself up.

He promises not to and does anyway, with a cold beer in one hand, and then a second and a third, staring dully at the family photograph sitting on the coffee table in front of him. Stares at Sam's face (younger, less defined, but still with that familiar smile) and curses himself over and over in his head for failing his little brother, for not warning him, for not bothering to teach him anything about hunting, for not connecting with him fast enough, because now he's dead and never coming back. Never getting older. Never marrying Jess. Never being happy, getting his degree in law, having kids.

No, he realizes slowly. Not never. It's not impossible. What's dead should stay dead, he believes, but Sam's a special case—he can't really live without his brother, can't live in this perfect world going crooked and off-kilter without him. And there are ways to fix it, if he dares to try; he knows that all too well from his hunting days, has seen it plenty of times in action. It can be done, but if he wants to do it, he has to act fast—tonight, even, before they put Sammy in the ground. It's a lot rougher coming back to life six feet under than it is above, and it'd be a damn cruel joke for Sammy to be brought back only to die again, panicked and suffocating, locked in a coffin with no one ever the wiser.

He's almost in a daze as he stands, sets his finished third beer bottle on the coffee table and snatches his keys. It's maybe ten hours to Lloyd's Bar from here, less if he really pushes the Impala, and he's sure the place is still prepped for summoning, still a perfect crossroads for contracts. The car doesn't have his gear anymore, but he can find any spell components he needs when he gets there, use his driver's license for the photo. It'll be tight, but he thinks he can make it before the funeral.

He can fix this. He can fix all of this. His wish doesn't have to go bad—he can still have all of his family with him. It's worth it.

He leaps into the Impala in a rush, guns the engine, and is a town over before he even really realizes what he's doing. His mind feels so perfectly focused and he knows exactly what he has to do; he's desperate to see Sam alive and happy again, and uses it to fuel himself. He's an hour out on the freeway when his intensity and focus is broken for the first time by a chiming cell phone, still in his pocket. Almost, he ignores it, but when he pulls it out and glances at the screen and sees the word _Mom _he can't, and flips it open quickly. "Hey."

"Dean? Dean, where are you?" His mother's voice sounds frantic, afraid, desperate. "Carmen called—she said you'd been drinking and stormed out of the house and you're driving—Dean, honey, please, _please _don't do anything drastic, please come back, you know Sam wouldn't want you to do anything dangerous—"

For a confused moment Dean thinks his mom knows about the deal he's trying to make. He realizes a second later she probably thinks he's acting suicidal or reckless out of grief—admittedly not entirely inaccurate, but still. The frantic, terrified edge to her tone unnerves him, and his own smoldering, desperate determination begins to waver.

"Dean?" her voice sounds pleading now. "Honey, please answer me—are you okay? Dean?"

"I'm fine, mom," he finally manages to croak out. "I just...had a lot on my mind. I'm just driving, I promise." He forces a weak laugh that feels far too fake to his own ears, and adds, "You know how my baby calms me down. Just...just driving to clear my head."

"You've been drinking, honey," his mother says, still sounding scared. "You shouldn't be behind a wheel. Please, come home now. You can stay at my house if you want, like last time. Or we can pick you up, just tell me where you are—"

"No! No. It's fine. I'm fine to drive, mom, I didn't drink that much." His head is pretty cloudy, but definitely not from the alcohol; he's buzzing on his decision more than anything else. "Sorry, I lost track of time. I'll head back."

"Alright..." she still sounds hesitant to end the call, and he can all but feel the concern she has for him across the phone line. But after a moment she says, "I'll hang up then. I want you to concentrate just on the road, I don't care how much you think you haven't been drinking. But Dean—if you have any problems, call, okay? One of us will come get you. I...I can't..."

_I can't lose another son before I've buried the first one, _Dean hears in the silence.

"Just be careful," she finishes.

"I promise. I'll take it nice and slow," he says, before saying his goodbyes and hanging up. Then, true to his word, he pulls the car over on the side of the freeway and sits there for a while, being careful to not do anything reckless as he folds his arms over the steering wheel, rests his forehead on them, and thinks.

He wants Sam back so _bad. _So bad, and he'd give literally anything to have him back. His own soul is inconsequential, as long as Sam gets to live a full and happy life. And if it was just him—if he was the only one left, he'd do it in a heartbeat, no questions asked. He's got to protect his little brother no matter what, even from death itself.

But it isn't just him. He's got mom, and Carmen, and they're family too. And he realizes, as the feverish desperation in his head starts to cool a little, that he can't leave them either, can't do this to them, can't let them down. It's his job to protect them too, and if he goes to the crossroads and makes a deal, he'll be failing those still alive that it's his job to defend. Because a devil's deal at the crossroads is going to change his life, all of their lives, one way or another. And he doesn't know what he'll have to pay to make it happen, or what kind of offer he'll get.

He could get lucky—she could give him ten years, just like with all the other victims she'd tricked, and he could live a relatively long and happy life with his whole family. Or she could kill him instantly, trade a life for a life, like dad's deal for his own life—and he knows his mother won't handle that well at all. The shock of Sam coming back to life would be difficult enough to deal with, but her other son dropping dead at the same time would be too much, he's sure. Even if he managed to get a year or two, he's sure his mother won't handle the stress of him suddenly being torn apart by 'wild animals' or mysteriously disappearing so shortly after Sam died and came back. And what about Carmen? She's been nothing but a blessing, he can't do that to her either.

He fights with himself over it for more than an hour, only pausing to text Carmen once that he was still okay, just thinking, when she tries to contact him frantically. He never thought this devotion to his family could leave him so violently divided like this, not even when Sammy and Dad were fighting. He wants Sam back so badly, wants so much to be able to use his second chance to the fullest, patch up that relationship, be a good big brother like he's supposed to. But he can't abandon mom either, not after being without her for almost his whole life, not when _this _life is all for _her,_ and he can't give up on Carmen either, not after everything she's done for him.

By the end of the mental argument he's squeezing his eyes shut, trying to keep himself from crying in frustration as he rests on the Impala's steering wheel. "I'm sorry, Sammy," he says finally, voice hoarse, and it kills him to say it, "I can't let mom down like that. You'd do the same if we were switched, I'm sure...I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Sammy. I can't..."

His hands are shaking as he spins the wheel and directs the Impala homeward, and he continues to mutter his apologies the whole way home as he turns his back on the crossroads and Sammy's one chance. He pulls up in front of his mother's house and Carmen is already there, and they draw him into fierce hugs and insist he never scare them like that again, and don't take their eyes off of him for a moment for the rest of the night.

The funeral service the next morning is, according to everyone else, beautiful. Dean is one of the pallbearers, and if he'd been capable of bearing the weight of a full coffin on his own he'd have insisted upon it, because it's his mistake, his fault, and his responsibility. His mother delivers a stirring eulogy, and more than a few tears are shed. Dean's eyes remain dry the entire time—he'd said his goodbyes last night, on the side of a freeway in the middle of nowhere, and he's got nothing left to shed.

When they lower the coffin into the space alongside dad's, Dean's pretty sure a part of himself goes with it and never comes back.

* * *

><p>I forgot to mention it in the last chapter, but this fic is 100% written and will update at regular intervals until completed.<p>

Next up: in true Supernatural fashion, things start getting weird.


	3. Ten of Wands

**All Your Dreams Are Still As New**

Part three of a fanfiction by Velkyn Karma

**Disclaimer:** I do not own, or pretend to own,_ Supernatural_ or any of its subsequent characters, plots or other ideas. That right belongs to Warner Brothers and associated parties.

* * *

><p>Life goes on, and for a long, <em>long <em>time it's not easy.

Dean feels the absence of Sam every day, and it doesn't matter that Sam had been physically absent for weeks before his death. There's nobody to call or email or text anymore. He can't listen to Sam's voice for even a brief few minutes before his little brother makes excuses about tests or studying or dinner with Jess. He can't look forward to the holidays, when Sam's due to fly in and spend time with the family again. None of that will ever happen again, and it hurts every day when he gets up in the morning and remembers that all over, realizes it wasn't just a bad nightmare.

He never forgives himself for failing to save his little brother when he was needed most.

Dean's not the only one handling it poorly, either. His mother seems to have aged ten years in just a few weeks, and she hasn't been feeling as well since that fateful phone call. Dean's not really surprised. He's seen what grief can do to the living and the dead alike when hunting, and some deaths, he's learned, are particularly grueling—especially when a parent buries a child. He understands that all too well—he's feeling that same level of grief, even if nobody else knows just how responsible he'd been for Sammy before the wish. And after being forced to bury her husband—dad—he can only imagine how much this hurts her.

Dean remembers his resolve on the side of the freeway the night of Sam's wake, and swears he's not going to do anything to jeopardize what's left of her family. Part of him is sorely tempted to hunt down the thing that killed Sam and destroy it, whatever it was. But there's always a risk in that line of work, and if he dies just weeks after they buried Sam...he doesn't know what will happen to his mother, and he doesn't want to know, or put her through that. He's uncharacteristically cautious, careful, determined to protect her, for dad and Sam and himself.

He's also, he admits to himself, afraid to leave mom or Carmen for too long, for a hunt or anything else. Sam's death proved that the supernatural is still out there, whether or not he chooses to acknowledge it—and if it can take Sammy, it can take mom and Carmen too. There's no way in hell he'll risk it, not after failing his family once about his old line of work. Especially knowing dark things can and have come to Lawrence, Kansas before. So he stays home, and he still reads the newspapers and watches the news for the current events stuff, but he reads more carefully between the lines to make sure nothing strange is going on, either. Nothing is going to hurt his family on his turf, and the first sign he gets of a werewolf or a demon wandering the area, he's going to make it wish it had never been created.

There's nothing of the sort, for which he's grateful, because it would be exhausting to hunt on top of everything else he's been doing. Since Sam's funeral he's been stretching himself thin, trying to take care of everything. Money's been tight with all the funeral expenses, and he's been taking extra shifts at the garage to help mom with the bills, working long hours for a few extra bucks since he can't exactly rely on credit card scams anymore. Between that, taking care of chores at home, stoping by mom's regularly to look after the house and make sure she's okay, and giving his girlfriend the attention she actually deserves, he's working himself to the bone.

He knows mom and Carmen are worried about him because of it, but honestly, Dean prefers it this way. When he's focused on constantly staying active, and actively looking after what's left of his family, it's easier to keep his mind off the pain of losing his brother. Sam accused him of doing the same thing after dad died, throwing himself recklessly into hunting in order to stave off the grief, and this works just as well.

Even so he still feels it—still thinks about Sam every day—but over time, as weeks turn into months, it starts to hurt a little less. Christmas is awful, and for a second time he entertains the notion of visiting the crossroads again when Sam's not there to enjoy the holiday with them, but it gets a little easier after that. He never gets over it completely—Dean can still feel that hole inside him left by Sam's death, feels the regrets over never being able to patch things up with him before he died, and he knows he'll never forgive himself for failing his little brother. But it's not as painfully sharp anymore, and there's nothing he can do to change it that won't hurt his family in the long run, so he soldiers on and looks out for mom and Carmen and promises to make the best of the situation that he's got.

And just when he finally thinks he's getting better, that things might be okay again, life takes the knife in his heart and twists it a little deeper like the goddamn bitch it is.

It starts at the beginning of February. Carmen's at her night shift at the hospital and Dean, only just dragging his ass through the door after more than twelve hours at the garage, decides to hit the sack early and sleep like the dead until his shift starts again tomorrow. He throws himself into bed, passes out instantly, and wakes three hours later with the distinctly chilly and all too familiar impression that he's being watched.

He cracks his eyes open, and there's a ghost right there next to his bed, staring down at him.

"Jesus!" Dean hisses, and his mind zips lightning fast through his defense options. No guns (Carmen hates them; too many ER gunshot cases), no silver or cold iron knife hiding under his pillow (great way to freak out your girlfriend), and the closest container of salt is in the kitchen, which the ghost is blocking the only door to. Great. It's the first time he's regretted dropping some of his heavily ingrained combat habits since his wish began.

He sits up sharply, already backing up against the headboard, feeling his heart pounding and the adrenaline coursing through him in preparation for a fight. He's a little rusty after months of not hunting, but he'll be damned if they think they can actually get away with killing him easily. His senses sharpen with the fight-or-flight response, his sleep-blurred eyes focus better in the dark as his brain kickstarts into action from a dead sleep—

—and he freezes, because that's not just any old ghost, it's _Sam. _

He stares at the ghost of his brother, stunned, and Sam stares straight back. He looks more alive than most ghosts Dean's seen in the past—not ashy and pale, with destroyed clothing or matted hair, and there's no hint of the impale injuries that killed him, the way most ghosts bear their last moments on their skin. He definitely still looks awful, though. There's traces of dirt on his ragged-looking jacket, his clothes are rumpled, and there's a nasty looking cut on one arm, like he got sliced with a knife at some point. The worst is his expression, which looks anguished, pleading and exhausted as he stares straight into Dean's soul.

This is usually the point where the ghost flips the switch and goes from being pitiable to ripping people's organs out through their mouth or some shit like that, and Dean knows he should be careful, should be prepared, should fucking _run the hell out of there, _but he can't. It's _Sam. _Sam's not—he wouldn't—he could _never_—

_But that's not true, _a traitorous little part of his brain hisses in the back of his head. _Hell, he fucking _shot _you at the asylum last year, and other ghosts have killed for worse reasons than Sam's violent death. _

But Dean doesn't run, or fight, or do anything but stare at his brother, stunned. And to his immense shock and relief, Sam doesn't do anything to hurt him, either—doesn't even move from where he's standing, just quietly stuffs his hands in his jacket pockets after a moment or two.

"Sammy?" Dean asks finally, slowly, his voice shaking so badly that in any other situation he'd be embarrassed.

The ghost of his brother doesn't react to his name at all.

"Sam," he tries again, stronger this time. This is the ghost of wish-Sam, after all—he'd been confused at the nickname before, maybe he doesn't understand it.

But Sam's ghost doesn't respond to that, either.

Dean slowly shifts, intending to slip off the bed. Maybe if he can reach out to his brother, try to touch him, he can get his attention better. Some ghosts had a hard time understanding where and when they were, and if Sam hasn't done anything aggressive yet Dean's pretty sure he's not going to—

But he barely gets one foot on the floor when Sam acts. The ghost's head tilts slightly, and his jaw clenches in a motion Dean recognizes as what his little brother does when he's trying to fight back emotion (and often failing miserably). He blinks once, and then, still staring like he's waiting for his big brother to do something, says pleadingly, "Dean..._please..._"

"Sammy?" Dean asks, alarmed and concerned by the raw desperation that he can hear even through the fuzzy far-away sound of his brother's voice. "Sam? Please what? Please _what—_"

But he blinks, and Sam's gone, like he'd never been there at all.

Dean leaps out of bed, still alarmed, and searches the entire house, but he finds not a trace of his brother, or any signs of a lingering ghost—no cold spots, mysteriously moved items, or flickering lights. He'd give his left arm for an EMF Meter and regrets, for the first time, that some of his gear hadn't come over with the wish.

He looks for over an hour, but finds nothing no matter how hard he tries, and eventually heads back to bed. But he doesn't sleep—just lays back and stares at the ceiling, turning the newest development over in his head, feeling sicker and sicker by the second.

Because the appearance of Sam's ghost can mean only one thing: his little brother isn't at rest, which means he's suffering even after death, and that hurts too much for Dean to bear.

* * *

><p>Dean stews over it for days, to the point that Carmen asks him if he's feeling alright or if he's getting sick again. Dean just tells her he's fine, that he's tired after so many hours at work, and that he's got a lot to think about, and she eventually lets him be.<p>

The last part isn't a total lie—he's been thinking about Sam's ghost and nothing else since the night he saw his little brother again. He doesn't know why Sam's stuck here and hasn't been able to move on, but he assumes it's the violent, sudden nature of his brother's death; they've hunted ghosts with less of a reason to cling to un-life in the past, after all. Then again, most of those ghosts had been vengeful spirits, hellbent on making the lives of anyone who hurt them—and anyone else that got in the way—miserable or non-existent. Sam hadn't attacked him, hadn't even looked angry, which was a little unusual in Dean's experience but certainly welcome compared to the alternative.

Still, whatever Sam's reason for being unable to move on, the thing that had unsettled Dean the most was Sam's raw, desperate pleading for _something. _There was no question in Dean's mind that Sam's spirit had been asking him for help somehow. The real questions were why, and help with what? Dean had never told this wish-Sam about any of his supernatural experiences, apart from that one brief conversation in which he'd mentioned Sam would be good at hunting, and Sam had probably assumed he'd meant deer or ducks or something. There was no reason for Sam to think Dean had _any _experiences when it came to ghosts, much less how to deal with them. He supposes that ghosts could maybe have some sort of sixth sense that helped them pick out people who knew about them, but that explanation sounds weak even to Dean, who's used to half-assed explanations in his old line of work. Or there's the possibility that Sam's just haunting everybody in the family. Dean's got no reason to think he's being targeted specifically, and he can't exactly ask mom or Carmen _hey, seen Sammy recently? _without sounding like a dick or getting locked in a rubber room.

Whatever the reason for the haunting, Dean's determined to help Sam with whatever it is he needs. He failed his brother in life, but he's not going to let him suffer in death, and that pleading, anguished, faraway _please _is stalking through Dean's dreams and nightmares more effectively than any of the ugly, nasty things he's killed in the past year. He _needs _to help Sam move on; it's the only thing left he can do for his brother.

He thinks on it for days, and in the end the only reasonable conclusion he can come to is that Sam had been begging his older brother to forcibly cut his ties to the real world—to hunt him, and to end him. Dean certainly knows how, with all the salt and burns he's done in his life, and it sure as hell sounds like something Sam would do. His ghostly pleading had been terrifyingly similar to his drunken begging for Dean to kill him if his freak powers made him cross over the irreversible 'bad guy' line into his so-called 'destiny.' And the danger of him slipping now is certainly real enough—if Sam isn't given the opportunity to move on soon, chances are high that he _will _change into a vengeful spirit, agonized and screaming for release but tethered to the Earth by invisible shackles, lashing out at anyone he can to ease his pain. Dean can't—won't—let that happen to Sam, no matter what; his brother certainly doesn't deserve such a horrible end.

But God, it's going to be so hard to do that to his _brother. _He hated the weight of dad's orders to murder his own brother if he couldn't save him, and he hates the thought of destroying him now after he couldn't just the same. This isn't a typical open and shut case—it's family, it's too close to the heart, and it _hurts. _

He drags his feet on the issue at first, hesitant, unsure. It's been four days since he saw Sam in the middle of the night, and he hasn't seen a trace of his brother's spirit since, or any of the usual signs of haunting. Maybe he'd just imagined it. Maybe he was stressing out from working too hard, and his grief over his brother's loss is slipping through the cracks and into his dreams, manifesting as a ghost in his mind. Maybe he's just going crazy. Whatever the reason, he doesn't want to be forced to hunt his own brother if there's really nothing to hunt; it's like digging a knife into his heart for no reason at all.

By day five with still no sightings he's almost _positive _it was all a dream. He can't deny the feelings of relief he has, knowing that Sam really isn't suffering, knowing he doesn't have to defile his brother's grave. The relief shatters when, feeling better than he has in days, he heads out to dinner with Carmen—Valentine's Day—and halfway through the meal Sam is suddenly, inexplicably sitting next to him at the table.

Dean nearly chokes on his steak. Carmen gives him a concerned look. "Honey? You okay?" she asks, leaning forward and utterly ignoring the sight of his dead brother sitting between them at the round table. She pats Dean on the back. "You're supposed to eat it, not breathe it."

Dean doesn't even listen to her. He's staring at Sam, who's staring back once again, still looking disheveled and exhausted. The long slice up his arm is bandaged now—weird, because he's dead, so there's really no need to patch it up, right? It's not like he could bleed out and die again, could he?—but other than that he looks a little worse than before. More exhausted than the last time. Slightly darker lines under his eyes. A more distraught expression on his face than before. A lower, more defeated sag to his shoulders.

"Honey?" Carmen looks at him, and glances to her right, trying to catch what he's staring at. "Is something wrong?"

She can't see Sam, Dean realizes. He's only visible to Dean, for whatever reason. Maybe it's because they shared blood, maybe it's because Dean's a hunter and has experience with this stuff, or maybe Sam's chosen to just haunt him for whatever reason. Whatever the case, Dean's the only one who can see him, which means Dean's the only one who can help him.

As if coming to the same conclusion, Sam seems to lean forward slightly towards him, expression anguished, helpless. And just like the night before, he says in a distant-sounding quiet voice, "Dean..._please..._you have to..."

"I..." But Dean is at loss for words. Sam gives him that tired, helpless look again, and then vanishes before his eyes.

"Honey?" Carmen's looking worried now, wearing that same anxious expression she had the night Dean returned from his almost-deal at the crossroads.

Dean shakes his head to snap back to his senses, and says more or less convincingly, "Sorry. Thought I saw somebody I knew...turned out I was wrong."

She looks like she doesn't quite believe him, but she lets it go. The evening is more or less ruined for Dean, but he goes through the motions anyway, hoping to put her at ease. He barely pays attention—his mind is on Sam, and now that he _knows _it's real, that he's not imagining things, he knows what he has to do, painful as it's going to be. It's going to hurt so bad to have to do this. But it'll hurt a thousand times _worse _if he puts it off because of his own cowardice and ends up in a fight with a malevolent, twisted mockery of his brother's spirit, because he was too much of a bleeding heart to put Sammy to rest while he was still himself.

He plans it carefully, waiting until Saturday night, when Carmen and her friends have a girl's night out. She offers to stay with him, still concerned after their last dinner, but he insists that she leave. "You have fun, you deserve it," he tells her truthfully enough. "I'm beat after the garage all this week, I think I'm just gonna head to bed early."

So she leaves and he waves her off with a smile plastered on his face, and as soon as her car pulls around the corner and out of sight he bolts into action. He makes a brief detour to the kitchen pantry to grab the cylindrical container of salt, and then heads for the garage for the rest of the supplies. Lighter fluid and flashlight, crowbar for the coffin from the tool kit, shovel from the gardening stuff, book of matches from the grill; he moves with lightning speed to snatch it all, and tosses them into the Impala's trunk on top of the magazines and discarded trash. "Just one more time, baby," he mutters to the car, as he pulls out of the driveway and heads for the cemetery half is family is buried in, careful to keep his speed legal so he's not noticed—he can't exactly cut and run when this job is done. "Just one more time and it's over."

It takes ages for him to work up the nerve to actually start digging, and even longer to actually dig the damn hole itself. Six feet of heavy soil doesn't transplant itself easily and it's a damn sight harder to do with just one person. It was a lot easier when he had dad, or Sam—but that thought hurts too much when he considers just whose coffin he's unearthing, and he forces himself away from that thought. "It's gonna be okay, Sammy," he mutters instead, over and over. "Just a little longer and it'll be over. Promise."

It's the most painful promise he's ever made.

He's shocked he doesn't have any interruptions while he digs. He's not so concerned by the police checking in—the grave's pretty far back from the road, and graveyard vandals are pretty rare in this town, so there's no need for them to check in on the place. He's more surprised that Sam doesn't show up during the process. In past experiences, ghosts have a tendency to get pissy when you try messing with their bones, or at the very least moody, and Sam's one of the moodiest people he knows—knew. But Dean doesn't see so much as a trace of Sam, his flashlight stays steady the whole time, and it's too fucking cold in mid-February to tell if there's a ghost lurking around so that's no way to tell either.

He hits the coffin without incident, and cracks it open easily, like the dozens of others he's cracked in the past. After that it's not so easy. By now it's been months, and what's left inside has decayed enough that it doesn't look like Sammy anymore, which is arguably a blessing; it'd be a hell of a lot harder to do this if it still looked like his brother. But he still _knows, _and seeing those remains are a sharp reminder of just how badly he failed to protect his little brother. _You let him down, _it says, _and turned him into this thing. _

Dean fights back the urge to throw up. He's gotta save Sammy, now. No time for weakness. He has to be the strong one, one last time. But even so, it takes him a while to steel himself to act.

When he finally does, he works with methodical precision. He's going to do this _right, _perfectly, once and for all, so it will finally be _over _for the both of them. He scatters the salt, empties the entire container to be on the safe side, and adds a liberal dose of lighter fluid before climbing out of the hole. Withdraws the book of matches from his jacket pocket, slips one of the matches out, and...hesitates.

"I...I'm sorry, Sammy," he finally says, after a moment, addressing the remains down below. "You don't know how much. I'm sorry I let this happen to you. It never should have...you never should have died, and you never should've turned into _this._" He swallows, voice shaking slightly as he adds, "I'm a shitty big brother, and I know it. But it's gonna be over now, okay? I promise. I'm gonna fix it right now. It'll all be over soon."

It takes him four matches and ten tries before he finally gets one lit, his hands are shaking so bad. When he finally gets the damn thing lit, it takes every ounce of his strength to wrench his fingers apart and let it drop. The tiny tongue of flame bursts into greater life as soon as it hits the fluid and the bones beneath, and soon the coffin is ablaze, crackling hungrily as everything within it is consumed.

Dean watches intently, unable to look away, not letting himself even try. This is Sammy's real funeral and he's the only one attending; he'll see it through to the end. "Rest in peace, little brother," he whispers, when the flames begin to curl back with nothing left to feed on.

In the morning and back at home, when Carmen makes them a late Sunday brunch, she asks with a confused look on her face if he's seen the salt. "I just bought that thing two weeks ago," she puzzles bemusedly. "It was almost full. We can't have gone through it all yet."

Dean doesn't answer her. The brunch, when it's finished, looks like it should be heavenly, but it tastes like ashes when he eats it, and he gives up after two bites.

* * *

><p>Dean figures that's the end of it for Sammy, and his brother has to be at rest now. For Dean the torment's just starting, though. He knows Carmen's worried from the way she keeps asking if he's okay and trying to coax him to eat or sleep. And his mother watches him with concern every time he visits, tells him he really doesn't <em>have <em>to mow the lawn or fix the roof or pitch in on the bills this week. Once he overhears them talking to each other when they think he's using the bathroom, voices anxious. "I was so sure he was getting better after Sam...but it's like he's grieving all over again and I don't know why, I'm not sure what to do, he's starting to scare me a little..."

The worst of it is he really can't explain _why _he's like this to either of them, because they won't understand. For them, Sam was put to rest months ago at his funeral—they got their closure, they grieved, they managed to put it behind them slowly but surely. For Dean it's different—he just buried Sam a second time, and it's like picking open a wound to let it bleed all over again. All those regrets he felt before, the knowledge that he'd failed to protect his little brother, not once but _twice..._it's as sharp and as painful as the first time, compounded by Sam's suffering after death just as much as before it.

Carmen tries to convince him to go see a shrink, or get grief counseling, or some other crap like that. "It might help," she tries telling him gently. "I know you miss him, but you need to try and move on, he wouldn't want to see you like this..."

Like she'd know what Sammy thinks. She knew him even less than Dean's wish-self did. He refuses any form of counseling, even when his mother adds her own gentle-but-worried nudges for him to do so. The only thing a shrink's gonna do if he tells them about the salt and burn is give him a straight jacket anyway.

But he feels like shit inside all the same, with all those disgusting feelings of failure and regret and loss that won't go away, and it's like those things claw their way out of him into physical form. Maybe a week after he salts and burns Sammy's bones he gets sick again. It's the same thing he got before, on the day that Sam had died, as if life isn't busy rubbing his face in his own failure enough: fever, full-body aches, that pounding in his head, the difficulty breathing. And just like before, it gets worse, with that burning-knife pain on either side of his heart, and that strange, foreboding dread, that harsh anxiety that tells him _something is wrong, wrong, wrong, and it's coming soon. _

He's terrified at the feeling. The last time he felt it Sammy died; he's positive this is a sign that something else is coming, like Sam's agonizing visions when they were hunters. He calls mom and Carmen in a delirious haze, desperate to make sure they're both alive and okay, and when they assure him they are he makes them promise to be extra careful and get the hell out of wherever they are if _anything _weird happens. Carmen sounds worried and tells him she's coming home early to take care of him, he's obviously in bad shape. Mom seems concerned when he tells her _not to go in the damn nursery _because _Dean, there hasn't been a nursery in the house in twenty years. _He refuses to hang up and go to sleep like she asks until she promises anyway. She does, thank God.

Slightly more relieved, Dean drops his cell phone on the floor next to his bed, wearily curls up as another lance of pain spikes through his chest, and glances blearily at the door just in time to see Sam curl a hand around the doorframe and lean in to stare at him. Dean freezes, eyes wide and staring back in horror, and the next bolt of pain through his chest hurts worse than before.

Sam seems to realize it, because when Dean groans in pain he twitches forward a pace, like he desperately wants to come into the room but is being held back by something. _Not salt lines, _Dean thinks dazedly, through his shock and pain, _don't do that anymore._

"_Dean!_" Sam yells, and even yelling he sounds so far away, bubbly, like he's underwater. He looks exhausted, his face anguished and terrified. "_Dean, no, please, you can't, please, not yet—_"

And Dean can barely make out what he's saying, fuzzy as his head is and far away as the spirit's voice is, but he hears enough to read between the lines: _Please, don't give up yet. Not yet, not until you've freed me, you're the only one that can help. _

He groans and squeezes his eyes shut against the next throb of pain. When he opens his eyes Sam's gone again, vanished as though he was never there to begin with. Shortly after the worst of the symptoms pass, and the chest pains and the anxiety fades, and Dean falls into an exhausted stupor.

It's only hours later, when he wakes again feeling marginally better, that he realizes what he'd seen, and what it meant. Because it had been real: there was no doubt about that. Sam's ghost had unquestionably come to visit again. But that means his brother is still not at rest, because there's something _else _tying him to this world, and that's even worse than before.

How many times is he going to fail Sammy anyway?

He really doesn't want to know the answer.


	4. The Devil

**All Your Dreams Are Still As New**

Part four of a fanfiction by Velkyn Karma

**Disclaimer:** I do not own, or pretend to own,_ Supernatural_ or any of its subsequent characters, plots or other ideas. That right belongs to Warner Brothers and associated parties.

* * *

><p>Dean's illness isn't the last time he sees Sam's ghost.<p>

Four days after his recovery, he catches sight of his little brother's spirit while working on a customer's engine at the garage. He startles so badly he smacks his head painfully on the car's hood, when he sees his brother staring across the mechanics at him in broad daylight.

Three days after that, Sammy winks into existence right in his spot in the Impala when Dean heads to mom's house to drop off some money for the bills. Dean nearly runs the car off the road when Sam starts begging him for help again.

And three days after _that, _his brother's spirit starts pacing restlessly back and forth in his kitchen at nine in the morning. Dean nearly burns his hand on the stove's burner when he startles while frying eggs, and barely restrains himself from reflexively chucking salt in ghostly Sam's direction.

He knows Sammy's not doing it on purpose. He's seen enough actual malevolent spirits forcing their victims into dangerous situations to know how to recognize it, and this isn't that. But all the same, the potential accidents and minor injuries seem like a cruel reminder as to what Sam _will _be doing in the future, if Dean doesn't find him help soon.

And there's no way in hell Dean's letting it come to that.

But he's starting to get more than a little frantic, because try as he might, he can't seem to pin down what's keeping Sam here in this world. He knows he didn't miss a thing at the coffin—he'd been one hundred percent thorough because he'd been trying to avoid exactly what's happening now. And he knows nobody kept any additional part of Sam, like a lock of his hair, because he'd had a hand in preparing all the funeral arrangements and had been sure to keep track of that sort of thing out of habit.

But burning the bones hadn't worked, that much was clear. Sam was still appearing, to Dean and no one else, and Dean's starting to see him more and more often too. At first it had been every four or five days, but as time passes it's every three days, and then two, and then at least once a day, randomly and without any traceable pattern. Eventually he starts flickering into Dean's sight multiple times a day, although never for more than sixty seconds at a time. He's never more than a room's length from Dean when he does, although _what _he does differs day by day—sometimes he sits, sometimes he stands, sometimes he paces restlessly. He always gives Dean that exhausted, helpless look, though. And he often pleads with his older brother for something, always in the same far-away, underwater-static-broken voice: _please _and _you have to _and _I'm sorry I couldn't _and _why didn't you listen, _even though Dean's listening as hard as he damn well can.

But the worst by far for Dean is that every time Sammy comes back he looks a little different, a little worse. When Dean first saw him, before the salt and burn, Sammy had looked more or less alive, if like crap. As the days pass and the sightings increase, Sam seems to be gradually falling apart. His shoulders slump farther, his whole body starts to sag, and if Dean didn't know better about ghosts not needing to rest, he'd say his brother hadn't slept in days. The dark lines under Sammy's eyes get worse, his face a little gaunter, and his skin takes a waxier, unhealthy pallor. He looks thinner, and his ragged jacket and jeans look rumpled and uncared for. And the worst are his brother's eyes, which seem to be gradually losing hope day by day, as defeat settles in instead.

Dean can read the signs, and it scares him. He can tell his brother is deteriorating, his spirit falling apart, and when it falls too far that's when the despair and the madness will set in and a new dark spirit will be created. And he can't let that happen to Sammy, he _can't. _It'd be so cruel and so, so wrong for a good kid like Sam to turn into a vengeful _thing _like that.

And, if Dean's honest with himself—something he doesn't do all that often—he'll admit that he can't let it happen out of selfishness as well. He knows, if Sam were to change like that, he'd never be able to fight his brother anyway—because a part of it would still be _Sammy, _and after everything that's happened, all the ways he's failed his little brother, there's no way he could turn on him that way. Especially not when part of him would feel that he deserved to be killed in whatever violent fashion the spirit would come up with, as penance for letting that spirit down.

So he throws himself relentlessly at the problem, searching for a solution. Sammy is clearly being tormented here, if the way he pleads and begs Dean for help when he appears is anything to go by, and that's all the encouragement Dean needs to keep going. Sam might be dead, but damned if Dean is going to let anyone or anything hurt his brother, even in the afterlife. He's going to find a way to release Sammy even if it kills him.

But in order to find an answer, he first needs to know what's holding Sam there to begin with, and that's not so easy. Ghosts are usually held to the earth by their bones and a salt and burn generally does the trick, but other things can hold them as well, although it's less common. Sam could be attached to a particular object that was significant to him in some way, or he could be held in place by unfinished business or a grudge. He could even be trapped because of the thing that killed him; it wouldn't be the first time a malevolent spirit would be hellbent on achieving justice or vengeance before it could move on.

After brooding on the matter for over a day, Dean realizes that helping Sam move on is not going to be nearly as cut and dried as he'd first hoped. The situation is rapidly growing complex, reminds him too much of their old hunter cases while traveling the country. That life has taken everything from him, even now, and he hates being dragged back into it; hates even more that the case is so difficult, because he just wants it to be _done _as fast as possible for his and Sam's sakes both.

But he's determined to do it anyway. He's not going to get back into the life—he threw in the towel and accepted his second chance gratefully, and he doesn't owe total strangers his life and his soul and his sanity, not anymore. He doesn't have to be the hero for them. But he'll be damned if he doesn't owe Sam, owe him _everything. _He owes him more than he can ever hope to repay for how badly he failed to protect him, and if he can save his little brother in some way, even after death, then he'll do this one last job and gladly.

So he begins the hunt. He starts simple, digging through boxes of Sam's possessions in the attic at mom's. He waits until she's out of the house, because he doesn't need yet another lecture about letting Sam go and how _he wouldn't want this, honey. _Sam's spirit occasionally flicks in and out, watching mournfully, as Dean digs through the more sentimental, personal stuff that hadn't been donated to charity—photos, academic awards, sports trophies, books, laptop. There's other boxes marked _Sam _in the corner from when he'd been a child, and Dean digs through those too for good measure. He handles faded photographs of a happy toddler Sammy, and worn toys and stuffed animals and brightly colored crayon drawings, with an extra edge of bitterness, because these were the things Sam never had a chance to have in his own memories and wouldn't see again now.

But none of the objects seem to trigger Sam's spirit or even catch its attention. When he's even there, the ghost only focuses on Dean and nothing else. Nothing strikes Dean as being a potential ghost anchor either, and with a sigh of disgust he finally gives up and leaves the painful memories he can't actually remember behind.

The item theory is more or less a bust, so Dean starts researching into Sam's history instead, trying to figure out if there's any unfinished business holding him here. It takes him three days to break into his brother's computer—the digital stuff had always been Sammy's thing more than Dean's, and he doesn't have as much practice at it. But when he finally gets in, he spends long hours up at night digging through his brother's files, searching for any hints of _anything _that might give him some clue as to how to save his brother. Carmen tries time and time again to peel him away from it, insisting he needs to rest and take a break, that this is obsessive and unhealthy, that he should just let Sam be already. Dean ignores her, carefully skimming through each and every word document and image file. But other than a lot of very boring law theses, some official-looking documents about scholarships, photos from college outings, and a couple spreadsheets for expenses, he finds nothing of interest; kid doesn't even have any porn hidden away on it. So unless Sam's hanging around because he's pissed he didn't get to finish his degree (unlikely), that's a dead end.

When that turns out to be a bust he starts interviewing Sam's friends at school instead. He finds these easy enough from Sam's Stanford yearbooks, connecting untidy well-wishing scrawls to names and faces and contact information. Stanford's nearly two thousand miles away and he can't exactly pop over there and back before dinner, even running the Impala at top speed, so he settles for calling with official sounding titles and emailing with fake important addresses, making it out like an investigation. Sam's got a lot of friends, and Dean goes on longer and longer breaks at the garage to handle them all, ignoring his manager's frowns every time he turns his back on a customer to answer his cell. They don't understand, after all—this is Sammy's soul on the line, it's a hell of a lot more important than some whiny customer's rust bucket.

But his investigations turn up nothing on that front either. Sam was well liked, friendly and helpful with everyone. The girls, all of them, adored that he was such a sensitive individual and so _understanding; _you could always talk to him. The guys all claim he was a bro that'd back you up in almost anything, and you could count on him to come through. Nobody seems to think he had any sort of enemies or problems, and everyone agrees his relationship with Jess was happy and healthy. In other words, as far as everyone knew, Sam had the most perfect, content life in existence, with no grudges and nothing at all to regret.

And Dean let him die, like the terrible big brother he was. The thought digs the knife in his heart in a little further, especially when he realizes he's at another dead end.

Sammy, or at least his spirit, seems to realize it too. After days of useless research the ghost seems to become more agitated. When he flicks into existence around Dean more often than not he's pacing restlessly, glancing over at Dean with an expression that's exhausted as always, but now there's something else to it too. He looks sullen, a little betrayed, and—as more days pass—a little angry. Once he freezes in the middle of his pacing, stares at Dean, and spits angrily in that far-away garbled voice, "_Don't you dare do this to me, Dean._" He looks so frustrated and helpless and _furious _that Dean's automatic retort chokes in his throat. That expression on his brother's face _hurts, _and it also scares him more than a little, because Sammy's never been angry or aggressive before now as a spirit, and if he's starting now...

Dean doesn't want to think about what that might mean.

Sam vanishes, and Dean, out of habit, relocates to a part of the house not occupied with things that could potentially stab or bludgeon him to death. But there's no attack, and Dean throws himself more feverishly into his research, trying to find answers for his brother. _Don't you dare do this to me, Dean, _Sam had snarled, like he was scared Dean was just going to give up when he hit a dead end, like he was only making a token effort at best. "Not givin' up that easy, Sammy," he mutters out loud, determined more than ever to finish this.

But he's been pushing himself hard since he's resolved to free Sam somehow. Carmen and his mother comment constantly on how he's not taking proper care of himself anymore, not eating as much as he should or sleeping as much as he ought to, how he's obsessing over these little details and things about Sam unhealthily. He supposes something he's doing is unhealthy, because he gets sick again—the same thing as the last two times—that very night. By now he's used to the fever and the aches and the difficulty breathing, and the burning hot pain around his heart doesn't resurface, so it's not as bad as before. He's miserable all the same, though, struggling and gasping to breathe through the night, and it only gets worse when Sam reappears at his bedside, looking anguished and scared, at three in the morning. "_I'm sorry," _the ghost babbles, "_I'm sorry, I'm so sorry Dean, I didn't mean it, you can't—_"

But he vanishes before Dean learns what he can't do.

He forces himself up the next day before the illness is really even over, but he can't waste time being miserable—he's got to help Sam. He dives back into his research on his brother's life, ignoring mom's and Carmen's insistences that he please take it easy, let them help him, because it's not like they can help with this, they wouldn't understand. Sam's the only one who really can, and he's poor company at best these days, when he even bothers to show up. Sam's spirit wavers a lot between angry and mournful these days. One visit he'll be begging Dean for help like he always does, and the next he'll be furiously accusing Dean of abandoning him or giving up, accusations that Dean would be fighting back against if there wasn't already a shred of truth in them, with the way he failed his brother so badly. The anger still scares Dean, because while he's no stranger to an angry Sam, anger in humans is normal—anger in ghosts is deadly.

Fortunately, while Sam is sometimes a pissy spirit, he's never a violent one—not yet, anyway. The worst he does is pace around angrily for a minute or two before winking out of existence to go wherever he goes when he's not here, and after the first few times Dean stops worrying as much about having steak knives or appliances flung at his head by invisible hands in a fit of rage. If nothing else, Sam makes an awful poltergeist—even now he's just too damn nice for it, and more often than not the next time he blinks back into Dean's peripheral vision he's apologizing for shouting before returning to his pleading.

Dean really, really hopes this means that Sam's fighting off that edge of madness and darkness that eventually takes wayward ghosts. The longer he can last, the more time Dean has to find him an answer.

No matter what he does, Sam's background yields nothing but dead ends—but there's one more possibility, near as Dean can figure. He resorts to old habits and breaks into the office of the doctor that used to treat Sam, digging through his brother's medical records for signs of something unusual—namely, migraines or weird dreams. Sam's visions made him a target when they were hunters, and haunted his little brother in life as surely as Sammy's haunting him now. Maybe they'd caused him some sort of stress or trouble and he'd tried to keep it to himself, the way he'd tried to hide the visions from Dean at first.

But there's nothing there either. Sam had a perfectly clean bill of health and Dean sees no traces of anything unusual whatsoever. Furious, Dean chucks the folder across the dark room, scattering pages everywhere. Sam flicks into being in the midst of them and gives Dean one of those dull-eyed accusatory looks that says they're heading for another angry moment in the next couple of visits. Dean groans in frustration and feels like tearing out his hair.

* * *

><p>The unfinished business angle's a loss; he just can't turn up anything no matter what he does.<p>

Dean figures the next order of business is killing whatever the hell killed Sam—not easy to do when you live nearly halfway across the country, much less when you've got family to still protect. But he can't _not _do this either, not if it means Sam's release, so although he'd prefer to be on hand in case of an attack he prepares some alternative defenses. He carves careful sigils into the foundations of his and mom's houses to protect his mother and Carmen, sets up purification bags in the four corners of each house, and hides devil's traps in discreet but fortifiable areas. He also makes sure both houses are stocked with salt, and slips a few of his mother's silver knives into his own house and the trunk of the Impala, just in case.

His mother and Carmen grow from concerned to alarmed at his actions, and don't seem to believe him when he tells them it's safer. He doesn't really expect them to understand anyway, which is why he offers little in the way of explanation beyond _stay here and stay safe, I've got to take care of something important _before he takes off for California in the Impala.

It's only when he's halfway to Palo Alto that he even realizes this is exactly what dad did, when he ran off on hunts for days at a time with no explanation. He can't decide if he understands dad better for it, or hates himself more.

It turns out that the thing that killed Sammy is a poltergeist—and a real nasty one at that. It takes Dean all of an hour to identify the damn thing, once he visits the apartment complex Sam and Jess had been looking at (now condemned, after six other 'accidents' in just under a year). It takes almost a week to actually kill it, though, mostly because he hasn't got a lifetime of supplies he needs in the back of the Impala anymore, nor does he habitually stock herbs and spiritual remedies just for the hell of it. Palo Alto doesn't have much in the way of the real deal when it comes to spellcasting and hoodoo, and Dean spends most of his time driving all over the damn place collecting components for the purification ritual, as well as rearming himself for when the thing inevitably tries to kill him.

It also takes longer because he gets sick—_again. _These weird fits of fever and aches and chest pains and breathing problems are starting to come more often, and although they don't usually last more than a day, they leave him feeling frustrated and weak as a newborn kitten. Dean hates feeling weak to begin with, and he _really _hates these fits because Sam's ghost always becomes more active when they arrive—he gets panicky and distraught, pleading with Dean more insistently than usual, often begging him not to give up yet. Dean hates seeing his brother acting like _he's _the one dying, and he sure as hell doesn't want Sammy getting even more upset, not when he's the one already dead and his soul is on the line.

It's the ghost's latest panicked, pleading fit that makes Dean go charging in before he's really fully recovered from his latest bout of illness, desperate to finally free his brother. It's not one of his smartest decisions. Poltergeists are really best fought in teams, with at _least _one other person covering your back, so one person can act as a distraction while the other takes care of the rituals and is on hand just in case things go south. Dean had briefly considered tracking down another hunter to recruit before he'd gotten ill, but had decided against it. It would have felt weird going in without Sam or dad, and besides, this was _his _fuck up, _his _failed brother, and _his _mistake to fix alone. Which was all well and good, except he'd forgotten it was a damn _apartment complex, _there were a hell of a lot of floors and walls to stuff purification bags into, and nobody else to distract the damn poltergeist while he did it.

But Dean's not one to back down once he's decided to do something, and he dodges cracking ceilings and flying rubble as he tackles what is at _least _a three-man job solo. Well, mostly solo—he frequently catches sight of Sam out of the corner of his eye as he works, staring at him pleadingly, looking anxious. He's honestly surprised that's all Sam does. Ghosts can fight poltergeists, after all; mom had proven it at their very own house, before Dean had accidentally made his wish. And if this is really what Sam needs for closure so he can finally move on, Dean's a little surprised Sam isn't attacking the thing with every incorporeal atom in his body. But he doesn't even seem to notice the presence of the evil spirit—he just continues to watch Dean when he appears, and grows more agitated whenever Dean takes a particularly damaging blow, murmuring _no, please _and _Dean, hang on _and _you can't give up yet _in that far-away garbled voice of his.

Several cracked ribs, a sprained ankle and wrist, one dislocated shoulder, a nasty bump on the head, and more bruises and cuts than he can count later, he finally stuffs the last bag into a crack into the top floor on the north wall. There's an unearthly screaming as the spirit finally disappears—and finally stops flinging things at him. He slumps back against the wall and breathes as shallow as possibly can to keep the stress off his injured chest, eyes flicking around the room as he waits for Sam to step in again. As much as he loves his brother, wants to see him again the _right _way, he hopes Sam doesn't come back. If he doesn't, then killing the poltergeist worked, and Sam's finally free.

But he doesn't see anything but stars dancing in front of his vision from exhaustion and pain, so he picks himself up and heads for the motel he's been staying in for the past week, just like old times. He patches himself up with the first aid kit he'd been careful to secure during the ritual components hunt, sleeps like the dead until checkout, and wearily heads for home, finally glad that at _last, _it's all over.

Somewhere halfway through Nevada, Sam appears in the passenger seat of the Impala, and gives Dean that mournful, pleading look that Dean's gotten all too familiar with. "_Please,_" his little brother's spirit whispers in that cut-off static voice. "Dean, _please, _you have to..."

Dean screams wordlessly in the car, a strangled noise full of all his pent up rage and frustration and desperation, and wonders what the hell he has to do to finally escape this fucked up version of everything he's ever wanted.

* * *

><p>Between travel time, his illness, and the hunt itself, it's almost two weeks before he rolls back into his driveway in Lawrence, Kansas.<p>

His family is in a state of panic. Dean had learned from dad's mistakes enough to remember to answer his cell phone and tell his mom and Carmen that he was okay, just had something he needed to take care of, and not to call missing persons on him or anything. It seems it didn't reassure them any, because Carmen looks like she's seen a ghost when he walks through the door. And when his mother rushes over after Carmen's frantic call, she's horrified by the remains of Dean's cuts and bruises and bursts into tears, wondering what's happened to him.

"Sam wouldn't want you to do this, honey!" she says helplessly, cradling his head in her palms, like he's a child and she's checking if he's feeling well and trying to reassure him. "You're hurting yourself over him, he'd be horrified if he could see you now, honey, please, _please, _you have to let us help you."

Sam's spirit, looming over her shoulder, doesn't look horrified so much as exhausted, and gives Dean that begging look again that utterly ruins his mother's attempts to calm and convince him. And Dean feels bad for making them worry so much, he really, really does. But he can't give up on Sam like that, never.

They keep an eye on him for hours, which keeps him from getting any decent research done or figuring out new angles. His mother is reluctant to go home, but Carmen promises to keep an eye on him. Dean can feel his mother shaking when she hugs him goodbye. Not for the first time, he hates how his wish for her could so utterly ruin her life.

He discovers he's been fired from the garage, after not showing up for more than a week on top of his poor performance. No loss, really. Having a job had been a novelty, but it's not like he's ever really had one in the past. More time to devote to saving Sam, now, without any distractions. Carmen seems disappointed at his distant response to a perfectly normal disaster in perfectly normal lives, but Dean's never been that—it had been foolish to pretend, it had cost him too much.

Sam's pleading hounds him now. Dean barely sleeps anymore, and when he does he doesn't even bother to go up to his and Carmen's room anymore; just crashes for a couple hours on the couch, close to the books and the computer so he can jump to it as soon as he's up again. He's getting more than a little desperate now, looking for answers, because he's exhausted all the options he can possibly think of that could keep Sam's spirit here. If it's not his remains, or unfinished business, or a need for vengeance and justice against the thing that killed him, then what's left? What could _possibly _be anchoring his little brother here, and what could he do to free him before it's too late?

He digs further into information on curses and spells—maybe his brother's trapped because of one inadvertently triggered. He researches cleansing rituals and methods used in dozens of cultures and religions to help wayward spirits move on. He starts hoarding spell components and ingredients, ordering them online and delivered directly to his door so he doesn't have to waste a second away from the books. He practices every single chant, incantation, and even prayer he can find, hoping to send his brother on his way.

Nothing works. Sam continues to haunt him, pleading, anguished, desperate, looking worse and worse by the day. He begs for help and every day Dean fails him, and it's driving him crazy.

His family tries again to get him to go see someone—doctors, grief counselors, anyone. He refuses. His mother is getting scared for him, he can tell. He does his best to reassure her that he's okay, drags himself away from his books long enough to stop by her house fairly regularly and make sure she's alright, that nothing's slipped into the house to come after her next. He tries to reassure Carmen too, but her constant attempts to get him to leave the house to go out to dinner or to a movie or just _out _for fresh air are annoying and frustrating. He has to keep shrugging her off, telling her no, he can't, not until this is done.

She asks less and less, until one day he realizes he doesn't hear her anymore at all. It takes him three more days to actually find the letter she leaves on the bed, which reads simply, _I'm sorry, Dean—I tried, I really tried to support you and help you with your grief and to get you to move on, but it's like you don't hear me anymore, and I can't help you this way. I used to know you pretty well, but I don't anymore. I wish you the best, and I hope one day you can forgive yourself and find yourself again. I love you. Carmen. _

He stares at the letter dully for a while before tossing it in the trash. Part of him hurts to think he'd failed somebody else that he'd considered family, but it's pretty much all he does these days anyway, so what's one more disappointment?

The world's starting to fall apart at the edges with one more of those perfect pieces gone, and Dean devotes himself relentlessly to fixing the one constant that's left: Sam's spirit, which is still hovering and pleading like always. In between even more frequent bouts of those feverish sickness episodes, he starts grasping at straws when none of the counter-curses and spells and incantations work. During one bout of sickness his headaches are worse than usual, which makes him think of Sammy's vision migraines, which makes him think of the Demon, and in a desperate flurry he starts researching the hell out of that thing too. Never mind that over twenty years of hunting had already turned up nothing—Sam, the Sam _he _knew, had a powerful grudge against that thing, and maybe that's keeping him from moving on somehow.

But there's nothing. Like it didn't exist. Dean spends hours on the internet, searching for the omens and warning signs his dad and Ash had pieced together regarding the Demon's arrival, for signs of the strange 'freaky kid' army. If there any out there he can't find them; it's like the bastard was never a problem for Sam at all. Mom had said there wasn't a fire in the nursery either, and Sam didn't display any powers—it's like the Demon had been written out of their lives completely.

Which means he's not the thing holding Sam there, either.

Sam's looking worse and worse, now, barely speaking anymore, dull-eyed and hopeless. He only becomes more agitated and frantic when Dean's not feeling well, like he knows Dean's pushing himself to the brink and if he goes over now there's no hope for him at all. Every time Sam winks out of existence Dean's afraid the next time he comes back he'll be an ugly, vengeful spirit, agonized and lost. The thought pushes him even harder to succeed.

Dean's at his wit's end when he starts trying to contact everyone he used to know before everything changed. He's fully expecting them to not know him; since he'd never been hunting, he'd never have met them. He's more surprised when it turns out the vast majority of his old connections—Bobby, Caleb, Ellen and her family—are dead, probably because they didn't have one of the three Winchesters backing them up or saving their asses. That hurts too, as yet another confirmation of just how imperfect his perfect wish is. Hell, even Gordon's dead—not that Dean ever considered calling that bastard up, but he'd seen the obits dated back to around the time he and Sam would have stumbled across that vampire nest and saved his ass normally. The only one who he manages to connect with is Pastor Jim, who is kind enough as a priest but utterly impersonal compared to how Dean remembers him. The man offers to pray for Sam's soul, but Dean figures it's not going to be enough.

He considers visiting the crossroads again. He vetoes the idea almost immediately. It's not that he wouldn't pay anything, life and afterlife included, to save Sam—but he's not trusting the redemption of Sam's soul to a demon. Not even he's that foolish.

His mother visits daily now. She's concerned he's having a mental breakdown; she's scared out of her mind for him. She's already lost her husband and one of her sons to death, and as far as she can tell the last member of her family is slipping away into madness. It's gone too far, she insists. She's getting him help. She'll have a doctor come first thing in the morning.

But Dean knows what that means. They'll lock him up, padded rooms, meds and all, and he's not crazy. He _knows _he's not crazy. He knows this stuff is _real _and he's got to save Sam already, he's been failing him too long. So in the middle of the night, he packs his duffel bag with some clothes, loads the laptop and all the books into the Impala just like old times, and hits the road. He breaks into mom's house long enough to make sure all the wards and sigils he'd put there are still in effect—even now he has to be _sure _she's safe, because mom was the point of it, _all _of it. He leaves her a note—_Sorry, have to do this, wish I could explain. I wish I could fix everything, undo all the ways I messed things up. Going to fix what I can now. Lives are on the line. Love you—more than you could ever know. Dean—_and sets off into the night.

Sometimes, Sam's sitting next to him, and for a few moments at a time it's almost, _almost, _like everything went back to the way it was.


	5. The Tower

**All Your Dreams Are Still As New**

Part five of a fanfiction by Velkyn Karma

**Note: **Just one more chapter to go after this one!

**Disclaimer:** I do not own, or pretend to own,_ Supernatural_ or any of its subsequent characters, plots or other ideas. That right belongs to Warner Brothers and associated parties.

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><p>Dean still wonders how it came to this. How he manage to fuck up his perfect second chance, get his brother killed, drive away his girlfriend, and terrify his mother. He's just that lucky, he guesses. Nothing ever goes right for a Winchester, especially not him.<p>

He stays on the road for a while. He's not going anywhere in particular, not unless he unearths something that might help—spiritual grounds, places supposedly close to the afterlife, particularly hallowed churches with so-called history of miracles, anything that might help Sam get some good vibes and move on already. When he's not on the way to the next place, he's huddled up in libraries and motels, searching for his next options to try and help Sam.

But he's running on empty, both for ideas and on energy. He doesn't know what to do anymore to help Sam. He gets sick more and more often, always the same thing, always accompanied by Sam's fearful begging and panicking. Eating repulses him these days, and he can't even look at a big juicy cheeseburger anymore without wanting to throw up. He gets maybe an hour or two of sleep a night, tops. He probably looks as shitty as Sam's ghost does, which is saying something when he starts comparing himself to the dead guy.

He knows he's desperate when one day Sam flicks into existence, shoulders slumping tiredly as he sits on one of the chairs in the motel room. As usual he whispers helplessly, "Dean, _please..._you have to—" and Dean snaps upright, whirling to stare down at the ghost in frustration and exhaustion.

"I have to _what? _I'm _trying, _Sammy! I'm _trying _but you gotta help me out here a little!" He waves a hand at his little brother's spirit in frustration, but the ghost just stares mournfully at him, uncomprehending.

"Just tell me what you need," Dean says, almost begging by now. "Sammy. Please. What do you _need _to be at peace? Just tell me and I'll get it for you, I swear, but you gotta work with me here!"

But Sam just continues to stare, dull eyed and exhausted and hopeless, before he disappears twenty seconds later. Dean rubs his face with his hands tiredly as he sits back down on his bed (_his _bed, because even now he habitually rents rooms with two, even when he's alone) and groans. He's never bothered to try talking to ghosts they hunt in the past—that's always been Sam's thing more than his, that sentimental understand-the-dead kind of stuff. It's a mark of just how badly he wants this to be over for the both of them that he tried just now, and still it had done nothing.

"I'm trying, Sammy," he whispers, not sure if the ghost actually hears him or not, when he's not visible. "I'm trying. You just...just gotta hang in there a little longer. Give me a little more time."

He just hopes Sam still _has _a little more time.

* * *

><p>Life starts to blur after a while. Dean measures his time from motel to motel, researching and moving on constantly, never staying any place for long even if he doesn't have hunting or running from feds to worry about. Occasionally he's forced to slow down when another bout of illness hits him, unpredictable and random, but he's up and moving again as fast as he can, not willing to let him slow it down. Sam is the only real constant in his life—and even though he's only there a few times a day, by now Dean has gotten so used to being haunted by his little brother that he doesn't even bat an eye when Sam suddenly appears beside him in the Impala or the motel room or the library. Which is probably a good thing, since people stop staring at him for jumping or twitching in surprise at nothing.<p>

The things Sam says blur together too, after a while. It's always the same, always begging Dean to do _something, _but it's always garbled and choppy, like he's talking underwater, or like a transmission keeps getting cut off with static. Dean wearily pays attention to his little brother's words, when he speaks at all these days—it's getting rarer and rarer—hoping that one day Sam will drop some sort of hint that will help them both.

Even so, he's caught by surprise when one day something changes. Sam appears in the space of an eye blink, today pacing restlessly around one of the motel beds while Dean wearily kicks off his boots and gets ready to try for another few hours of sleep. He pauses in mid-pace and as always turns to Dean to stare at him. _Unlike _usual, however, when he speaks his voice is clearer. It sounds raspy and hoarse, like he hasn't used it in ages, but more in tune, like the static on the radio's starting to clear out a little. And Dean catches something new. "Dean, _please..._you have to get up..."

Dean blinks, and stares up at his brother in surprise. Sam is staring at him so intently it's like he's trying to telepathically convey something to his brother. On impulse Dean stands, weary but ready. "Okay, Sammy, I'm up. Now what?"

He hopes that Sam will lead him to whatever it is he needs to know, but Sam just stares at him intently again before disappearing. Dean curses tiredly and glances around, but Sam doesn't make another appearance, and after a moment Dean flops tiredly back onto the bed and tries to rest.

He thinks about the words all day when he wakes up, even as he goes for coffee or visits the library to use the free wifi for research. There had been something to that message that was different. He was _sure _Sam had been trying to tell him something, something important, but the answer is buried in the back of his head and he can't reach it no matter how hard he tries. Maybe he was supposed to go somewhere. Maybe it was encouragement to keep fighting. Maybe Sam was trying to order him to do something...maybe Sam's stuck here because his unfinished business has something to do with _Dean, _and that's why he's haunting only him_. _

The last thought scares him more than a little. He knows he failed his brother badly by letting him die and get in this situation at all; he hopes to hell he's not holding him back as well without realizing it.

But that doesn't feel like the answer, and it bugs him the more he thinks about it. He feels like he might have known it once, but the solution has mysteriously disappeared from his mind, and he can't find it again. Sam's no help either, when he appears; today's a silent day, it seems, and he just stares as always for the few seconds he's around.

That night he dreams about a warehouse. The weird thing is, he's been in a hell of a lot of warehouses, but he definitely doesn't remember this one. Even weirder, he feels like he's supposed to.

He moves on. Gets sick again. Sam panics again, but says nothing useful. Gets better. Moves on again. Always, he thinks about that message. _Dean, please, you have to get up..._

What the hell does it _mean? _

A week later, it happens again. Sam's pleaded and raved other times, but they've been the same as before: distant, garbled, broken up and unclear. But he's in a diner one night when Sam appears across from him again, expression more intent than usual, and says fiercely, desperately, "_Dean. _You have to _wake up. _Please. _Please. _I don't know how much longer you can last, and they don't..."

It's the clearest, longest, most concise sentence Dean has _ever _heard from his brother since the day he died. Sam looks exhausted and messed up just like always, but he also looks coherent; desperate, but determined. He looks—feels—_alive, _if only for a second.

He disappears, but his words linger in Dean's brain. _Dean, you have to wake up. Please. _

His coffee suddenly tastes rancid in his mouth, and he spits it back into his mug. He feels vaguely like being sick and stands to head towards the restroom, but stops halfway, turns around, slaps some money on the table, and heads out the door for the car instead.

_You have to wake up. _

_Wake up. _

_Wake...up. _

He feels so many things at once, suddenly. Breathing is difficult again, but if he's not sure if he's sick or just in shock. There's a flicker at the back of his brain as the image of the warehouse in his dreams lights up in his mind, and it's important, he _knows _it's important now. Things have been degrading too fast, too suddenly too...perfectly. Sam's intensity, his odd _aliveness, _his insistent message, none of it's _right..._

But, Dean realizes, as he stumbles towards the Impala and leans heavily against its side, breathing hard, Sam's _always _been an atypical ghost from the beginning. He's never had the usual ghostly indicators, now that he thinks about it—no cold spots, weird sounds, flickering lights, moving items. He didn't fight the poltergeist, or even seem to realize it was there. He's never reacted to anyone or anything else, only Dean, and nobody else can see him. Absolutely nothing's worked to free him, no matter what actions Dean takes or spells he casts. He doesn't even dress the same way that the wish-Sam did—his ghost is always decked out in the same jacket, jeans and boots, not the preppier clean-cut college crap or dressy suits Sam wore when he was alive.

Something is wrong, Dean realizes. Something is really, _really _wrong, and he can't believe it took him so long to see it.

His mind is running wild now, and he can practically feel something in the recesses of his brain start fighting to claw its way into his consciousness. He manages to get into the Impala first, arms curled over the wheel wearily, before it really hits him. The memory is strong, intense, bursting across all his senses at once, like it's been hidden away so long it's been storing up every sense of being and feeling until the day it's finally released. He knows he's sitting in the Impala, but he's also acutely aware of standing somewhere else, somewhere that's dark and smells musty and with a murmur of voices and quiet weeping in the background and—

_The warehouse. The hunt. The djinn. _

_The creature speaks to him through its proxies, its puppets; nearly perfect almost-but-not-quite-real imitations of his mother and his brother and Jess, and the gorgeous woman he's never met before in his life but is simply too perfect a match for him in every way. His not-mother tells him to put down the knife like he's a misbehaving toddler. Not-Jess reassures him he never has to care for his brother again because his brother is _happy. _His perfect match proclaims love for him in a way he's never had before. His not-brother worries, but then _changes, _voice of the djinn, insisting, cajoling, hypnotizing..._

_But Dean can't. He can't because it's wrong and it's not real and he doesn't want to die, even if he wants this so badly. He says he's sorry and he takes the knife and turns it to his stomach, but the soothing voices of all his loved-ones-but-not-really are mesmerizing, and he doesn't move fast enough. The djinn appears out of nowhere, grasping his wrist, forcing the knife away a second time. _

"No, no, no," _it insists, in its rasping, frighteningly soothing voice. "_Not this. Never this. Sleep. Sleep. Rest. Forget. Be calm. Be happy. Sleep." _And Dean tries to pull away, but the djinn reaches out to caress his face almost soothingly, and his mind feels sleepy and clouded, and he slumps tiredly. The silver knife slips from his fingers and clatters to the ground, but the noise feels distant, distorted, far away. He's already having trouble remembering why he's here in the first place, why it even matters. He thought he'd felt anguished, bereaved, betrayed, but those feelings are slipping away too. The proxies have vanished and the warehouse is melting away; the room is spinning; there's no monster anymore, no thing to hunt, no answers to find. He's been given a second chance and that's all that he thinks should be important to him. He's no hunter anymore. He's safe, loved, surrounded by family, and happy—_

_And he wakes up in a hospital room, surrounded by them all. _

The sensations fade away slowly, but their impact lingers. Dean stares wide-eyed, breathing hard and clutching the Impala's steering wheel like a lifeline, as for the first time he understands what's happening to him. The _djinn_—he realizes now he's never once thought about the damn thing since he woke up in that hospital bed. He's known about his wish, that things changed, but he's never once considered where it came from—because the monster had stolen his memories of it away. It had completely played on his desires, quietly swept his memories of the encounter at the warehouse and all the things he'd learned there under the rug, soothed his mind back into the illusion without Dean ever being aware of what was going on. His wish-family had told him he'd passed out unexpectedly, and they believed it; they were only constructs, filaments of memory spun together to seem perfectly real if you didn't look too close. And Dean had believed _them, _because he'd forgotten that his job _was _to look too close and see the lies for what they were.

"Son of a bitch," he rasps hoarsely.

His shock turns to anger pretty quickly. Dean doesn't like being played, and he _really _hates it when the thing that gets him is one of the things that go bump in the night. Before he realizes what he's doing he peels out of the parking lot of the diner and hits the nearest highway, setting course for Illinois. He's somewhere in Florida and it'll probably take him a day or two to get there, a little less if he pushes the car for all it's worth, but he's determined anyway. He's still got some of mom's silver knives in the trunk, and he can pick up some lamb's blood from a butcher shop when he's closer to the warehouse. He's going to kill the damn thing properly this time.

For a while it's nothing but fury that fuels him. He's pissed and he wants to be at the damn warehouse already to show the bastard just how pissed he is. Six hours of monotonous driving takes the edge off his fury, however, and he realizes Sammy hasn't shown up again once since the diner and his revelation. Dean wonders why. A day ago he would've been happy—if Sam pulled a vanishing act like this, it'd probably mean he'd finally,_ finally _managed to move on. But now Dean's not so sure that's what's happening, and he has a funny feeling Sam's sudden disappearance is connected to the way he finally regained his missing memory.

"Hold on, Sammy," he mutters. "Hold on. I'm working on that whole waking up thing right now. Just hang on a little longer."

He decides to use his car-bound hours to plan out his method of attack. This bastard's beaten him twice now; he figures the 'run in pistols blazing' approach isn't working, and he's not keen on a third loss. But it's when he's trying to think up a way around the djinn's defenses that he realizes, really realizes, _he's lost twice against it. _He's tried fighting it before and it doesn't work. This whole world is probably it's sandbox—as soon as he gets close to the thing, it can probably alter reality again, just like the first two times. Attacking it directly means losing when it can so easily distract him with his own desires and tuck his own memories away in a corner of his own head without his knowing.

Dean grimaces at that, because he doesn't want to give up. He doesn't want to just drop a hunt in the middle or admit that the monster in the closet scares him. He wants to beat it. He wants to win. He wants to _wake the hell up already. _

And that's when he makes another realization: it's not about beating the djinn, not right now. It's about waking up. No matter how badly he wants to stab that fucker with a special blend of lamb's blood and silver, brute force had never scared it. Nearly taking his own life, however, certainly had—it had been the first time the djinn had bothered to interfere with Dean since the first time he was catapulted into his wish. It had tried to coerce him with his family and with sweet, gentle words, but when that hadn't worked, when Dean's willpower had overridden even its powers, it had resorted to force—and the first thing it had forced him to do was drop the knife.

It had been threatened when he'd tried to _escape_ the dream, not when he'd tried to kill it _in _the dream.

Dean's rather suddenly aware that he can hear the blood rushing in his ears, feel his heart thudding heavily in his chest. His ninety-percent-sure theory had, apparently, been a pretty good one. He ups the chances to ninety-five percent now, and it must be the answer, because why else would the creature have intervened when it had so much power otherwise in his head?

He's sure it's the answer, and he's sure he has to act _now. _He's not sure if the djinn is paying attention to his wish-dream or not, but he knows without a doubt that if the thing catches on to his intentions, it'll try to stop him. He has to act while it's far away and can't touch him.

His mind feels alight with a frantic, wild sort of energy as his eyes sweep the road, and his grip on the Impala's steering wheel is so painfully tight his knuckles are white. But despite his sudden frenzied energy, a part of his mind feels oddly calm and detached. Things feel almost dreamlike as he spots the oncoming eighteen wheeler on the opposite side of the highway, like a wall moving fifty utterly unstoppable miles an hour.

"Well," Dean hears himself observing quietly, "It worked once, didn't it? And that was without even trying."

Before he can reconsider he jerks the wheel of the Impala and roars across the median strip into oncoming traffic. It's late and the roads aren't busy—just him, the car, and the eighteen wheeler. The truck blares its horn in an angry, frantic warning and immediately tries to swerve and slow, but with that much bulk it's not going to stop in time. Dean helps—he guns the Impala's engine and rockets at the oncoming behemoth of a vehicle at ninety miles an hour, and not even he could stop if he wanted to now.

"We're going home, baby," he says grimly to the car. "It's time to wake the hell up."

The truck takes up all his vision now. There's a horrible crunching noise that's even louder than the blaring horn, and the teeth-jarring scream of metal on metal, and a wet, sick _snap _so close and so loud it's got to be inside him somewhere, and—


	6. Four of Swords

**All Your Dreams Are Still As New**

Part six of a fanfiction by Velkyn Karma

**Disclaimer:** I do not own, or pretend to own,_ Supernatural_ or any of its subsequent characters, plots or other ideas. That right belongs to Warner Brothers and associated parties.

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><p>Dean's breath shudders in his chest as his eyes fly open, and almost immediately the real world hurts. It's too damn loud and too damn bright, something scratchy and far too heavy seems to hold him down, and there's something strapped over his face and he doesn't like it, wants it gone <em>now. <em>

He struggles to breathe, and desperately tries to claw at the thing on his face while he squints against the brightness, and wishes he'd go deaf so the noise wasn't so _loud. _Seconds later something grabs one of his wrists, holding it back from his face, and before he can try to lash out at it in response somebody says, "Woah, Dean! Dean, calm down—it's just the ventilator mask, relax—" and Sam is suddenly there, crouching over him.

Dean freezes, and forces his stalling-out brain to catch up and _focus. _He tries to take in everything his senses are throwing at him, make sense of it all. Noise—beeping, the mechanical noise of a ventilator, soft murmurs in the distance. It's white, really white, but the sterile impersonal white of a hospital and not being dead (he supposes, anyway). The scratchy thing holding him down is a blanket, he realizes, because he's laying on a bed, and now that he thinks about it it's actually not even that scratchy. It smells mostly like plastic and less like the over-sterile antiseptic he's used to, but he realizes that's probably due to what is, in fact, an oxygen mask strapped over his face.

The feeling of a hand on his wrist vanishes, and Sam disappears from his vision. Dean feels an inexplicable spike of panic and the heart monitor he's attached to, damn thing, gives him away. Sam immediately says, "Relax, not going anywhere, just getting the light," and true to his word, things get dimmer and much more comfortable a second later. Dean lets out a low groan of relief and relaxes a little further into the bed.

Sam returns to his field of vision, staring down at him with a mix of relief and worry, and between that and the hospital room they're in things are too familiar, too much like the _last _time he woke up in one and nothing had been real. The heart monitor beeps faster as his heart thuds almost painfully in his chest again, and Sam, looking _very _worried now, reaches out for him again. "Dean, you gotta calm down, it's—"

Dean feels like shit, but he moves fast all the same. One of his hands tugs against an IV line as he snags one of Sam's wrists. The other one launches for his brother's shirt collar and fastens on securely, dragging him closer. Sam's eyes widen in alarm and his free hand reaches up to try and pry Dean's fingers from his shirt, but before he can Dean hisses as strongly as he's able with the mask still clamped over his face, "Where do you find wendigos, and how do you kill'em?"

"Dean, that's not—"

"Answer the question, Sam!" he snaps, as best as he can, with his voice muffled by the thing on his face.

Sam's eyes go wide again, and he glances around once before fixing his brother with a look that clearly states he's concerned for his brother's sanity. Dean feels his heart sink, and dread seeps into his blood like ice once more. He didn't escape. His plan hadn't worked, other than maybe preserving the fact that he knows it's a dream this time. Sam doesn't know anything about hunting, which means this can't be real—

But then Sam shakes his head in exasperation, and hisses low enough that only the two of them can hear, "You usually see wendigos in the northern U.S. around Michigan and Montana, but we've seen them as far south as Colorado. They like remote mines and caves, anywhere a person might have come close to starving without help. They resist pretty much everything but fire." And then, a little louder and more warningly, "Dean, this is a _public hospital, _keep it down about the weird stuff."

Dean barely hears the warning. The sound of his freakishly smart encyclopedia of a brother succinctly rattling off information about monsters is music to his fucking ears, and he breathes a sigh of relief. He lets go of his brother's shirt collar, but impulsively pats his shoulder instead, and then his arm, and then grabs his other wrist, fingers running over the pulse on the inside carefully. He's solid, real, alive, heart beating and breathing air and remaining in place for more than sixty seconds at a time, and it's perfect.

"Okay man, you're scaring me," Sam says, and Dean can hear the little waver of uncertainty in his voice as he gently pries Dean's fingers away from his pulse. "I'm gonna get you a nurse—"

"No!" Dean says, louder than is probably necessary, but he really does _not _want to deal with other people right now. "No," he adds a second later, voice muffled through the mask, "No, I'm fine. I'm fine...and you're fine and...and _alive _and...it's better. Everything's better. Right again."

This does not appear to comfort Sam any, who still looks a little shaken at his brother's actions, but thankfully he doesn't go for any professionals. He _does _frown when Dean starts trying to pull the ventilator mask off, though, and reaches out to stop him. "Leave it, Dean. You were having trouble breathing before, you might still—"

" 'm _fine,_" Dean insists, tugging more insistently (and with pathetically little coordination) at the straps keeping the thing on his face. "Not comfortable. If I have trouble I'll put it back on."

Sam shakes his head with that all too familiar exasperated look on his face, but leans forward to help Dean get it off, probably because he knows Dean won't give up on the thing otherwise. When he's closer Dean's able to study his face a little better. His brother looks awful—like he hasn't eaten or slept anything in days, or changed his clothes, on top of looking like he's been in a fight. He looks, quite frankly, like a dead guy walking, but it's not until he pulls the mask from Dean's face that Dean catches sight of the bandage wrapped around Sam's forearm—where he somehow knows a long gash is, because he saw it before, if only once.

Everything about the way his brother looks is all too familiar because he's seen it daily for almost the past year, if only for a few moments at a time. Sam's his own ghost. The thought sends a spike of panic through Dean again, and he has to remind himself that _Sam's not dead. _He'd checked, just a few minutes ago. Solid. Heartbeat. Breath. _Alive. _It's fine. Sammy's _fine. _

Sam's eyes flick to the heart monitor and he looks worried again, so Dean speaks up to distract him before his little brother decides to put the mask right back on his face. "You look like shit, Sammy. What the hell? I'm the one attached to the tubes here!"

Sam blinks, but then offers a weary looking smirk. "Yeah, well...that's what happens when you sleep in a chair at a hospital bed for nearly two weeks..."

Dean's eyes widen. "Two _weeks? _that's _it? _What the hell _happened? _I've been...in _there..._for almost a year!"

"You don't remember anything?" Sam asks, looking worried. Dean has a momentary feeling of deja vu, because not-Sam had asked nearly the same thing with the same expression when he woke up in the fake hospital when everything rebooted again. _But this one's real _he tells himself. _This is the real Sammy and he's alive. _

"Bits and pieces," he answers. "Called you...learned about the djinn...found the warehouse...saw _it..._" He pauses, squeezes his eyes shut at the memory of blue fire swirling in the darkness. "After that..."

"Yeah?"

Dean gives him a smirk that feels more than a little bitter. "Got my wish. Everything I ever wanted."

Sam picks up on the bitterness, clearly, because his frown deepens. He looks like he's about to ask further, but Dean cuts him off with a tired, "Not here, Sam. Later." Sam frowns, but finally nods, and drops the topic for the moment. Dean knows he'll dig for answers again later, but he's also smart enough to wait until they're in the privacy of a motel or the Impala before doing so.

For now, Sam explains his side of things. After Dean had hung up on him, he'd jacked a car and gone after his brother, not wanting him to fight an unfamiliar creature without backup. It had taken him time to find the ruins Dean had mentioned, and by the time he'd arrived Dean had already been strung up in one of the deeper rooms, catatonic and utterly unresponsive to anything Sam did or said.

"You weren't alone, either," Sam adds. "There was a girl there too...worse off than you, she must have been there longer. And the djinn, obviously."

"Did you kill it?" Dean asks, with an edge of fury. After the thing played him not once but twice, he's really hoping it's not still breathing.

"Barely," Sam admits, "But I got it in the end." Clearly not without getting roughed up, Dean notes, based on the faded bruises and the long slash bandaged on his arm, but at least he'd gotten out of there without falling into a 'wish' of his own.

"After that I cut you and the girl down, and brought you straight here to the hospital," Sam continues. "I'd been hoping after I killed the thing that you guys would wake up, but whatever it did to you...you were in too deep, I guess." He swallows, and Dean can see the remnants of helplessness and worry on his face, the same expressions his ghost wore in the wish. "It was...it was bad for a while, Dean. At first I thought you were just in a trance, but not long after I got you here your heart stopped, and a few other times you'd just stop breathing. A few hours ago your vitals started dropping. The doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong..."

He looks deeply shaken, and Dean can only imagine how panicked he must have been, seeing his brother falling and failing without any way to help. And then he realizes he doesn't have to imagine it at all—because hadn't ghost-Sam, _this _Sam, freaked out every time Dean got ill in the dream? And hadn't that illness always come with chest pains and breathing problems? Hadn't Sam's spirit worried more and more, every time Dean fell farther and got worse in the wish?

Maybe Sam hadn't been a ghost at all. Maybe he'd been the only _real _thing there, seen in fits and flashes when Dean caught a momentary glimpse of reality.

"What about the girl?" Dean asks, after a moment. He vaguely remembers seeing the ghost of a girl when the wish first started, so long ago now, but if Sam wasn't really a ghost then maybe she wasn't, either. Whatever the case, even if he doesn't know her he feels a kinship with her anyway, as victims of the same fucked up monster that used their own desperations and desires against them.

Sam clenches his jaw for a moment, that sign that he's holding back on some kind of emotion, before saying softly, "She died last night. Fell into a coma and passed away maybe a few hours later."

And suddenly, Sam's last message as a ghost makes even more sense than before. _Dean. You have to wake up. Please. Please. I don't know how much longer you can last. _If the girl had died just before and that was the obvious fate waiting for him...

Dean swallows, now understanding why Sam had look so shaken and so relieved when he woke up. Hell, he feels a little shaken himself. He'd dodged a bullet there alright...if it hadn't been for Sam, he'd have lived forever in that world, growing old, having kids, working a nine to five job, being _normal, _until...

Until he died in a hospital bed in his sleep, with his anguished brother watching and never knowing _why. _

"Let's go," he says suddenly. He's got an overpowering _need _to get the hell out of this place and never, ever come back. His skin's crawling and this place feels wrong and there's that unsettling feeling in the back of his head that not even his own desires are okay anymore, and it makes him just want to _move. _Fresh air. The open road, with his brother next to him. A crappy run-down motel that nevertheless feels more like _home _than the house in his dream ever will.

Sam's eyes widen when Dean tries to push himself up, and he immediately tries to push him back down. "What, go? No way, Dean. You just woke up, the doctors should still look at you, you can't be ready to move yet—"

"I'm _fine, _Sammy," Dean insists, slapping his brother's hands away. "Let's just go. I'm fine, just tired. Promise."

Sam doesn't look entirely convinced, but Dean's not even trying to hide just how badly he _needs _to leave, and Sam's always been observant about that kind of thing. Eventually he sighs and says, "How can you be tired? You've been sleeping for two weeks!" There's concern in his voice, but his tone is intentionally jesting, and Dean understands the agreement for what it is.

So they bolt. Dean's a little unsteady and uncoordinated after two weeks of catatonia while his mind was doing stuff somewhere else, and Sam has to help him disconnect the tubes and sensors and help him get back into his clothes. Neither one is a stranger to such actions, though—a testament to how often they wake up in and run from hospitals, sadly—and they're out of there in record time.

The only catch is that Sam, though understandably concerned, _hovers _a lot in his usual mother-hen fashion whenever Dean's sick. And while Dean used to be used to it, right now it's like being haunted by his dead brother all over again, with the same clothes and same expressions and same habit of waiting close by out of the corner of Dean's eye. Dean tells him to knock it off, his voice snappish. But there must be an edge of pleading in it he's too tired to really be aware of, because Sam—who normally ignores Dean's insistence that he doesn't need help when he's not feeling well—frowns and backs off.

Sam does insist on driving, though, which Dean thinks is fair seeing as he's pretty sure he'd accidentally wrap them around a pole if he tried to right now. He also wordlessly stops off at a diner to pick up a massive juicy cheeseburger to go—even remembers the extra onions—when Dean's stomach rumbles loudly and he realizes he hasn't eaten in two weeks and he's _starving. _And he picks out a nicer motel than usual for them to stay at, not the same as the one they'd originally been in when they started the hunt, so they'll at least have better beds when gets around to actually _sleeping _as opposed to tripping on some monster's creepy-ass wish power.

He's even nice enough to wait until Dean has devoured his burger and taken a long, hot shower (because two weeks of laying in a hospital bed is nasty as hell) before he asks about what happened to Dean. And Dean knows Sam's not going to let up until he gets answers—the kid is relentless about this kind of thing when it comes to talking about things and dealing and all that pansy shit—so he figures he'll just get it over with now and tell him. And he does—explains the wish, how perfect it was at first, how wonderful and happy everyone had been, now _normal _he'd felt, and how it all gradually started to descend into hell the moment wish-Sam had died.

Sam's a pretty good listener (one of the reasons people in their cases are so willing to talk to him), and he doesn't interrupt while Dean recalls the year he lived in his head in a perfect-gone-sour world. Dean wraps it up and and mutters, "But I don't get it. It was a whole year I was in there, and it _felt _it, I felt every second that passed. How the hell was I only out for two weeks?"

Sam shrugs. "Dreams are the same," he offers, with his usual penchant for pulling completely random facts out of thin air. "The average dream lasts anywhere from a few minutes to an hour in real time, but they can feel like they lasted way longer. Time's not a sense the brain keeps track of very well."

Sam agrees with Dean that the random illnesses probably coincided with his moments of heart failure or breathing problems in real life. "The first one happened right before that me died, right?" he speculates. "That must have been the first time your heart stopped...I'm not sure how the djinn's power worked, but I'm guessing that's why what you were seeing started going downhill. It got distorted somehow, and with the djinn dead there was nothing to fix it..."

He also agrees with Dean's guess that he'd probably been catching sight of the real Sam without realizing it, and explaining it as a ghost. "I was doing most of the stuff you mentioned," he admits. "Sitting or standing next to your bed, pacing around...and I kept talking to you 'cause, well...I thought it was like last time, you know? When you were there, but not in your body." He looks sheepish. "I even pulled out the Ouija board again, but you didn't answer that time..."

No, Dean wouldn't have. He doesn't remember the last time, but that had been an out of body experience. This time he was so far inside his body he couldn't get out again.

"The hell were you yelling at me for?" Dean asks, scowling a little. "You scared the shit out of me then, I thought you were going to go full-on poltergeist on my ass!"

Sam looks a little ashamed. "The doctors...they kept saying you were slipping away, like you were giving up, and I just..." He hesitates, looking uncomfortable. Dean thinks back to those moments and realizes how badly he'd misinterpreted Sam's words. He'd assumed Sam was furious because he thought Dean was giving up on his redemption. But now that he thinks about it, he'd probably been scared Dean had just stopped fighting for his own life, and turned it into a fight like he'd so often done with dad, desperate to get him to fight back just so he'd keep fighting at all.

Dean winces at the thought of his little brother waiting in a hospital room for him to wake up, not knowing if he actually would, knowing there wasn't anything he could do to fix it because the monster was already dead. For dealing with the same fear of losing his brother as he had the first time, knowing Dean _was _supposed to have died then, probably wondering if his time had come now instead. He curses himself mentally for taking so damned long to figure out what the problem was so he could escape, for putting Sam through that hell because he hadn't been strong enough to fight off his own desires the first time. "S'alright, Sammy," he says after a moment. "I get it."

The talk eventually wears down and Sam looks so beat Dean tells him to take a shower and go to bed. Sam looks reluctant to, but Dean is insistent. "You stink and your hair's even more of a mess than usual," he says, "And you obviously ain't slept in days."

"Yeah, I've just spent days watching _you _sleep," Sam says. His tone his joking, but his eyes are worried.

"I'm serious, Sammy. I'm fine, and I'm not going anywhere. It's over. Clean up and go to bed already."

So he does, and soon enough he's snoring quietly on the far bed. Dean, although he's exhausted physically and probably should do the same, feels mentally wired (and also reluctant to sleep himself, because, well, screw that, he's done it enough recently). So he stays up and watches TV with the volume muted so it doesn't bother Sam. Only really he doesn't—the TV's on, but it's a distraction more than anything, as he spends more of his time quietly counting Sam's breaths. Sometimes he'll glance over and watch the rise and fall of his brother's chest under the blankets, just to be extra safe.

Alive. Sam's alive. It's okay, everything's okay again, because that world hadn't been perfect in the end, wasn't anything close without Sam. Sam's here with him and he's _alive _and Dean can protect him and everything's going to be okay again. He's going to make sure of it.

"Don't you worry," he says softly, glancing over at his peacefully slumbering brother again. "I'm _never _letting that happen to you, Sammy."

And, feeling suddenly tired for _real _this time, he finally turns the TV off, rolls over, and falls into his first content and utterly dreamless sleep in two weeks.

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><p>And then in the very next episode Sam dies. Oops.<p>

A few fun facts! For starters, Real!Sam is actually in every single chapter at least once—did you spot him? The title of the fic comes from the same Led Zeppelin song that the original episode title comes from. And each of the chapter names are a specific Tarot card that references the events of the chapter.

This was pretty fun to write, guys. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed making it. Thanks for reading!

~VelkynKarma


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